My Other Creations: Butterfly Bracelet

When I first heard this week's Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge theme ("make new friends, but keep the old"), my mind was bombarded with that hard-to-get-out-of-your-head song from girl's camp that has those lyrics!  It's unfortunately still looping in my brain even as I write this.  That aside, I decided to go with some of my classic butterfly punches (old favorites) and make something new with them: a butterfly bracelet.

So I have to insert a huge disclaimer into the post at this point: the way I made this was totally disaster-filled and the end result is not what you'd call super-permanent.  This is made from a cheapy coil bracelet and paper.  One pool party and this little guy is toast.  Ditto if you get too near open flames!  Still, I will share my process, being the first to acknowledge its shortcomings.

I started with small pieces of patterned paper, which I smudged with ink here and there and then covered with clear packing tape for some shine and extra stability.  I punched out the shapes (either with hand punches or dies) from the paper I'd covered with tape.  I also used some butterfly stamps, which I stamped, then covered with tape, then fussy-cut out myself.  Next I coated the edges with embossing ink and sprinkled on some silver embossing powder.  Then I heat embossed them, so they ended up like this:

For those of you who are saying, "But wait!  It sounds like a bad idea to add heat to packing tape!" you are absolutely correct!  I ended up with several melted, fried and mutant-looking butterflies.  In fact, if you look closely at some of these butterflies' edges, you can see where the packing tape shrunk and pulled funny.  I had to go slow, hold the heat gun far away and pull the heat immediately after the silver emerged.  On a positive side note, the Stampendous Clip Tools are great for holding things that you want to emboss without burning your fingers off.

All I did after that was to attach the butterflies to my bracelet with some strong glue and jump rings.

Should you copy this technique?  Sure...if you're feeling brave and don't mind melting and shriveling about 50% of your work!  In retrospect, some alternatives that might work better would be to emboss patterned paper with silver edges and then add Glossy Accents on top for the same glossy look, or to add clear embossing powder to the whole paper surface and heat that up instead.  But my packing tape way was a fun experiment in laziness and it was definitely something that I'd never tried with butterflies before!

I love shopping at Simon Says Stamp, which is where I got the supplies for this project:

Kaiser Kaleidoscope Paper 6.5 x 6.5	Tim Holtz 12x12 French Industrial Paper Pack	KaiserCraft 6x6 Something Blue Paper Pad	Prima Epiphany 6x6 Paper	Bo Bunny Zip-A-Dee-Doodle 6x6 Paper	Martha Stewart Classic Butterfly 3 in 1 punch	Martha Stewart Classic Butterfly Punch
Martha Stewart Classic Butterfly- Punch All Over the Page	Decorative Strip - Butterfly Frenzy Die	Tim Holtz Butterflight On the Edge Die	Sizzix Big Shot Machine	Papillon Stamp Set	Impression Obsession Butterflies Clear Stamp Set	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Embossing Ink
Silver Embossing Powder Ranger	Heat Embossing Tool	Fiskars Acrylic Blocks	Stampendous Clip Tools	Ranger Archival Jet Black Ink Pad	Colorbox Rain Forest Ink	Peacock Feathers - Distress Ink
Worn Lipstick Distress Ink Pad	Picked Raspberry - Distress Ink

I can't wait to see how YOU interpret this week's theme, so upload your bits of geniusness to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog so that we can start off 2015 with some great inspiration and so that you can be entered to win a $50 voucher to the fabulous Simon Says Stamp Store.