April Butterfly House ATC Swap

This was a really wonderful swap. What is also very nice is that we are still getting new people joining in which is a fabulous way of continuing to get new ideas and techniques and takes on a theme. It keeps things fresh and interesting for the existing members and is just nice to have more cards in per theme! 

This is also a really pretty theme and there are some really wonderful colours and ideas here. Butterflies are a fairly easy idea to interpret and it offered a lot of scope for techniques. Butterfly House also opened it up a bit more as you could have gone for those big polytunnels full of colour and life, houses covered with butterflies... and also just butterflies and houses which have been taken up on in a couple of ways. 

I think one of my favourite cards is the little caterpillars on a branch. They are just so sweet and tiny! I'm fairly sure I've met them before too - on the Nasturetiums in the summer eating all of the leaves. 

There's been a lot of fun embellishments used on these, some handmade like the crochet butterfly and others collected and used. Several of the butterflies lift off the background of the card (mine included) which has created a lot of movement.

This is the only theme so far where I don't think there has been a specific colour range overall. Each one is a different colour, and some comparatively muted which is interesting. 

I like it when the techniques are written on the back of the cards. The above one has been created using Inktense pencils and water to colour in the background, futher embellished with back stitch and then the silver metal and fabric butterflies stitched over the top. 

The one below looks to have used a pre-printed fabric for the colour, but then created the butterfly out of stitches on an open weave fabric. Possibly using Blackwork techniques?

Then we have a machine stitched background with hand stitched applique butterfly (I think anyway, sometimes it's hard to tell and this blanket stitch is so neat!). 

I'll let you look through the remaining ones without commentary to see what you can pick up on and interpret. There is definitely something for everyone with this collection. Do you have a favourite?