Tuesday Tutorial: Butterfly WallFlower

This week's tutorial is done by Kris of CollageContessa. Kris is an experimental artist who loves to use lots of different mediums and techniques - collage, painting, fabric, stamps, paper, metal, ephemera and anything else I can get my hands on to create one of a kind altered art. In this tutorial we get to watch Kris as she experiments and plays with this pile of beautiful papers and makes a wallflower to welcome spring.

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Just for fun I thought I'd try to take pictures while creating something from scratch. You never know what you might make or where the creativity will lead you. Sometimes the work sucks! But this time I enjoyed what I made. Perfect for spring. (All images used in this project are from Altered Pages. See the kit section.)

1. If you're like me and hate to waste anything, you'll understand why all my extra paint on a palette ends up randomly swiped on scrap papers. This way I have a stack of them to use in future projects. Using scraps or painted papers like these, cut out leaf or petal shapes.

2. I even used lace scraps. Next, lay them out on a piece of paper and using india or other watery ink to draw all over them with the dropper or a calligraphy pen set.



3. Take a scrap of felt or fabric and cut 3 circles: 3 1/4", 2 1/4" and 2". Lining the petals around the largest circle, zigzag sew the petals to the felt.


4. Do this again with the medium circle. After both are complete, take strips of a dictionary page and layer them in a circle on top of the middle circle. Layer this sandwich on top of the large circle and sew through all layers.

5. Take the small circle and layer with a transparent image. Here I used a transparent Altered Pages butterfly. Sew 4 even lines (in pie sections) through the small circle and image. Then, take butterfly circle, lay on top of the sandwiched flower piece circles and sew around the edge of the small circle to connect the layers perfectly.

6. Turn over the whole piece and handstitch a length of sheer ribbon to the back as a hanger for your new flower!


This is a perfect little decoration to hang on your door to welcome spring.

With some of the leftover petals and images, I created a pretty card that says 'believe' written with the calligraphy pen.


I also made a few little cards that can be given away as a gift card set or used to sent little notes to friends. I then tied them up in a bundle with butcher's thread.

All these items can be found in Kris's Etsy Shop. You can purchase a kit of the images used in this project from Altered Pages in their kit shop. Have fun creating! I'd love to see if you make this, using the tutorial.

Learn more about Kris and her creative process on her blog - Collage Contessa