Let's Start This Off With a Fun Project - Butterfly Art

I will start off by saying that no butterflies were harmed in the making of this art! These are paper ones, folks!

Did I mention I used to be a teacher? (Well, no, probably not since this is my second post and the first one was the self-deprecating intro.) Well I was.

And like all good teachers, I like to do arts and crafts, especially on the cheap. Why do we have to make things on the cheap, you ask? I am eyeing the soapbox but am walking away in 3...2...1...

I am in the process of trying to find an eclectic mix of pictures for a gallery display I want to put above the living room sofa. Something kind of like this:

Except not exactly like that, (that's what came up when I googled "eclectic picture gallery above sofa"), but hopefully you get the idea. (P.S. - strangely enough, I actually have a sofa almost exactly like that and a side lamp almost exactly like that, but I have a way different color scheme, as in not stripes with orange and green and brown) (P.P.S. - I am in no way attacking you if this happens to be your house. It's really not that bad. Really.)

Anywhoo, back to my art. So I thought I would incorporate some natural elements into my design scheme (fancy schmancy talk for I like butterflies. I think they will look good.)

I saw a cool butterfly thing at IKEA:

But it was a little more white than I wanted. Um, plus it was like 50 bucks. For paper cut outs of butterflies. Which got me thinking. . . maybe I could make my own version! So whilst at IKEA, I spotted an almost identical shadowbox frame (for $9.99 I might add - waaaay better than $49.99). It probably has a name like Rivkaslvkoout.

Oh, pardon me. It is actually called the RIBBA frame. (I was totally close.)  It comes with a mat but I chose not to use it.

Next step was to find various pictures of butterflies I liked - I decided to go super colorful, but there are so many different species of butterflies out there you could pick all kinds of combinations. I printed these beauts off on photo paper. 

I then began the process of cutting these bad boys out. I will note that after cutting out a few with the antennas I began to develop arthritis in my hand, and decided they didn't look that good with antennae anyways. So my butterflies are antenna-less.

They look pretty realistic, right?! Kind of looks like a biology project from 9th grade. You know, the one your parents you did the night before (actually I did my own homework, FYI - but as a biology teacher I sadly saw that often). Speaking of parents, my mom actually came over at this stage, saw the butterflies on my desk from a distance and asked if they were real :) 

To make my paper creatures look a little less 2D, I decided to try folding them in half, so they would be more 3D like the $49.99 one from IKEA.

And here's a shameless kiddo picture of the "baby" working on her own art while mommy did hers:

For the background paper, I found some thick white scrapbook paper, traced the outside of the mat so it would be that same size and cut it.

I then laid out the butterflies in a way that looked good to me, ran a little super glue down the "spine" of the folded butterfly, and stuck them on. (I really didn't do any measuring - I'm sure you could to make it more precise, but I kind of just eyeballed it.) I decided to go with a more symmetrical layout than the IKEA one, but it would be super easy to lay them out in the upward swoop shape if you prefer that to the scientific type mount I strangely defaulted to:

So finally I slipped the art carefully in the frame, put the back on, and VOILA! Instant (well, not really instant, per se . . .) art.  But it was cheap. And I am really happy with how it turned out! I promise to take a picture once it gets hung up in my "eclectic gallery above the sofa".

Anyone else have any cool uses or ideas for a shadowbox frame?