Butterflies are popular image, symbolizing freedom, beauty, fine weather, release of emotion and much more. Even the word is beautiful--Papillion in French, mariposa in Spanish and Kamama in Cherokee.
Many people use butterfly images with light pastels and girly colors. These ATCs are unusually dark. After several hours of experimentation with various paints, stamps and printed images, and having no success with my butterfly ATCs, I decided to try using a black butterfly stamp over an existing background.
I started with a digital collage that I made in Photoshop using Graphics Fairy vintage advertising images. Using white printmaking paint, I sponged through various stencils to give the collage another dimension.
After the white paint had dried, I used a black Stazon ink with commercial square stamp of a butterfly and vintage French images. Since the stamp had a black border around it, I used two different washi tapes to hide the horizontal lines, which also unified the design. The washi butterfly tape repeated the theme, and the airmail tape repeated the French postal elements from the stamp. The white printmaking paint under the black stamp gave the cards a texture that isn't visible in the photo, but adds another dimension of visual interest.
These three ATCS will be traded with the Yahoo group Paper Traders. I made a total of six--I usually make extra ATCs, and keep the one that is my very favorite and also the ones that didn't come out quite right.
Butterfly is pulelehua in Hawaiian.
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