Pop (Can) Art Butterflies

Here's another of the projects that I sent to my friend Marlene in our swap.  The challenge here was to create a card with spring elements (hearts, flowers, butterflies, etc...).  Here's my card:

Here's a close up of the embossed butterflies and designer paper:

And, here's the inside of the card:

For the card base, I used Chocolate Chip card stock.  The corners of each of the layers were punched with the Scallop Trim Corner Punch from the Occasions Mini.  For the card front, I layered a sheet from the gorgeous Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Pack (very excited that this paper is also now available for My Digital Studio!!!) onto some Brushed Silver card stock.  I tied a piece of Pumpkin Pie Grosgrain around the designer paper and silver cardstock.  The greeting is from the Fifth Avenue Floral stamp set.  I also used that stamp set for the flowers on the inside of the card, which were stamped in Rose Red and Pumpkin Pie Classic Ink onto Very Vanilla card stock.  The paper strip on the inside is a piece from the Sweet Pea Paper as well.

The metal butterflies were created by running a piece from a soda can through the Big Shot in the Stampin' Up! exclusive Beautiful Wings Embosslit Die.  You might remember a sneak peek I gave you a few weeks back with this photo:

And, you might be wondering why I decided to run soda cans through an Embosslit!?!  I had heard of other crafters running soda cans through their Big Shots to create beautiful snowflake ornaments and more, and couldn't resist trying this for myself.  After cutting a few shapes with Bigz Dies, I wondered what would happen if I ran a piece of the metal through using my Beautiful Wings Die.  I was a bit nervous about what would happen to the die, but happily the experiment worked -- no harm to the die, just cool metal butterfly embellishments! 

To create these, you start with an empty soda can, then cut it open -- I found that the Craft and Rubber Scissors are perfect for doing this. 

I cut off the top and bottom, then trimmed through the middle, to end up with something like this:

You do have to be a bit careful as the edges of the can can be jagged and sharp -- however, the butterflies and other images that come out of the Big Shot have nice, clean edges. 

Another warning, these butterflies are very fun and addictive to make!  You can even get fun colors and image on them from the artwork on the soda can, and I'm guessing it might be possible to color the metal with Craft ink, but haven't tried that yet.  Will let you know how it turns out when I try that!

Be sure to let me know if you'd like supplies to make these for yourself.  Would love to see what you come up with if you try this technique, too.

- Michelle