Elegant Swallowtail

Yes, the Swallowtail stamp is enormous!  It's best to get that comment out of the way first.  But it's not hard to use.  It can be a wonderful background stamp or it can be the stunning focus of your card.  I chose to make it the focus of this "Z"-fold card.

I began with Elegant Eggplant.  It's a purple that has a sense of majesty to it and suits this stamp perfectly.  Being a Z-fold, the first section of the card is simply not wide enough to hold even half the Swallowtail.  So I chose to use a piece of Wisteria Wonder to heat emboss half the butterfly.  I used the Iridescent Ice and was  delighted to see how sparkly the wing became when I heated it up.  I cut the wing out carefully and then, after using my Flower Garden embossing folder to emboss the front fold of the card, mounted just about a half inch of it against the left outside edge of the Elegant Eggplant cardstock.  The effect was everything I had hoped for.

For the inside of the Z-fold, I used a 4" x 5" piece of Elegant Eggplant designer paper from the Regals Designer Stack.  I placed a cut out butterfly from the Beautiful Butterfly Bigz die in the centre and sponged around it using Elegant Eggplant ink.  Then I stamped my sentiment in the unsponged centre and finally used the new distressing tool to distress around all four sides.

Since my Z-fold is made from a piece of 5 1/4" x 8 1/2" cardstock and is scored and folded at 2 1/8" and 4 1/4", half of the back part of the card is still showing when it's closed.  The sponged and distressed designer paper is completely hidden when the card is closed.  I really didn't want to take any focus from the gorgeous Swallowtail wing and so I chose to cut a piece of 2 1/2" x 5" piece of Wisteria Wonder cardstock for that section.  First I tore the right edge in a ragged line to make it no wider than 2 1/8" at its widest.  Then I stamped three of the large butterflies from Papillon Potpourri in Elegant Eggplant ink.  Then I embossed the piece using my Flower Garden embossing folder.  I distressed the top and bottom edge and attached the piece, lining it up against the designer paper.

The finishing touches are rhinestones for each butterfly and the body of the swallowtail and some Dazzling Details along the entire perimeter of the card, using my fingertip as a tool.

Isn't it gorgeous?  It's much more dazzling in real life.