Bow Embelished Butterfly Card

This week I am actually in the middle of several large projects. I have a cross stitch sampler (or two) in progress, a 50 States embroidery project that involves a lap quilt as the final project as well as a few knitting projects on the needles. But what self respecting crafter doesn't have a million projects ideas and several things in progress?

Right?

So this week I decided to work on some cards. Paper crafting is my weakest area. I remember my Mom with all her tubs of stamps, inks and embossing powders. The truth is, all that is expensive! I just haven't had the patience to build up a working inventory yet. But, I do have a lovely stash of ribbon thanks to the Really Reasonable Ribbon of the month club. Now, I just need to use it more often.

The holidays will bring a bunch of birthdays and events for our family and now would be a great time to start working on all those birthday, holiday and thank you cards.

This week I broke out my Mini Bowdabra to create the yellow bow.

I was moderately pleased with this, but am thinking I shouldn't have gone with the mini version. If you have a bow tying tool, what do you have and do you recommend it?

For this project I also used some of the Mod Podge Mod Melt butterflies, a scrap of sample fabric from my stash, a pre-cut velum double sided gift tag (I ended up using the opposite side with "celebrate"), sequins, and more ribbon from Really Reasonable Ribbon.

I really liked the simple colors, and the purple "celebrate" tag was a nice little contrast.

I plan to do a bit more experimenting this weekend with the Silhouette for die cuts to use on my next cards, but this is a good start for my card stash.

If you are a paper crafter, what items do you suggest I add to my supplies to get started? What is your favorite product to use when making cards?

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