Butterfly Wreath for HOME Sign
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With Valentine’s Day over, it’s time to update the HOME sign! I wanted to make a wreath that would work for all of spring, even though I will probably end up making an Easter wreath as well. The Easter date changes, so I figure I can swap the two wreaths each year depending on when Easter falls. So we’ll call this the first of my March/April wreath set.
Spring means so much to me, but among those are lots of color and LIFE! I was inspired by two things as I was making this. One is this wreath that I made recently.
The other, of course, is a butterfly. It is a perfect symbol of all things spring.
I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, but I knew I’d need butterflies. Lots and lots of butterflies.
Here’s what I used:
Watercolor paper
Paint brush/water
Butterfly paper punch (Amazon has a LOT of options)
Small Command strip
I’ve done this thing a few times with the kids where they paint on watercolor paper, and then we cut out shapes to turn into artwork. We’ve done both birds and butterflies.
I decided to do that myself. The first step was to cover a sheet of watercolor paper with paint. I recently pulled out this set of pearlescent watercolors (that I’ve had for a while) for the first time to do some painting, and I am in LOVE. Oh my goodness, the shimmer is amazing.
I started painting stripes of color in rainbow order. I’m not sure if you can tell from this picture, but the stripes at the red end were bigger than the ones at the other end. It worked out fine. You could use as few or as many colors as you want.
As I said earlier, the shimmer is amazing! Even the water looked pretty.
Once I was done I let the paint dry before moving on to the next step, which was cutting out the butterflies. I love my butterfly paper punch and have definitely gotten my money’s worth out of it. If I didn’t have this punch, I might have otherwise tried to use my Cameo to cut out some butterflies or cut them by hand. I wasn’t sure about getting the paper flat enough for the Cameo to be able to cut it out, and also… this paper is THICK. Perfect for getting a high quality painting, but downright painful for cutting out. I would most definitely recommend choosing a paper that is much lighter in weight. Mine is 140lb, for the record.
But I didn’t. And I was stubborn. So I set about cutting my butterflies out. If I’m doing the math right, I cut out 112 butterflies. I was regretting my decision by the third. I kept going, though, and eventually moved my little setup to the entrance of the master bathroom, where I could kneel on the soft carpet and press down hard on the paper punch over the tile floor. That saved my hand and my sanity.
Eventually I had all of my butterflies cut out. I took some time to admire them before moving on.
I used my trusty Tacky glue for this, but I also considered using my hot glue gun. Whatever works. I started with the red butterflies and started layering them. As with all of my wreaths, I’m careful how I glue the first ones because the last ones will need to tuck underneath those. Once I had some of the red butterflies glued down, I became concerned that I might have too many of those and not enough of some of the colors at the other end of the rainbow. So I started back at the top going the other way. I think it ended up looking pretty well-balanced in the end.
Here’s what I had left over. Not a lot, as it turned out. I figured for sure I’d be able to make something else with the leftover butterflies, but not this time.
I have to admit I didn’t wait until the glue was fully dry because I was so excited, so I put a Command strip on the back and hung it up!
Here it is next to the tulip wreath. I love them both so much.
Next up is Easter. What should I do? Bunnies? Chicks? Eggs? All of the above?
