This may be a little unfair since you get to see my mom’s Mother’s Day card before I give it to her later today.  I CASEd the card from Sue Becker.  The design is sheer brilliance, in my opinion.  The butterfly die is definitely a great choice for this design, and I bet you’ll find some other dies in your stash that will work well also.  I would love to see what you come up with.

Here is the card:

To create the top layer of the card, I used the Work of Art stamp set and the large brush stroke stamp from the set to add different colors to the base.  When I added the colors, I also stamped with varying intensities of the same color.  And, yes, Gorgeous Grunge was used to add some random interest to the background.

The sentiment is from the First Sight stamp set, and it is absolutely perfect for this card. There are other wonderful stamps in the First Sight stamp set.  If you haven’t added the set to your collection, you just might want to consider doing that.  [It would make a great Mother’s Day gift – just a thought!]

When you have your top layer completed, use the middle size butterfly die from the Butterflies Thinlits collection and die cut the butterfly where you can capture several, varying colors.  Take the die cut butterfly from the paper, clean the small die cuts from the butterfly, and then glue just the butterfly body back into your card.  You can curl the wings of the butterfly to give them a nice lift.  And, there you have it!  A gorgeous card that looks much harder to create than it is.  Here is another picture of the butterfly to help show some of the detail.

There are so many possibilities with this card.  Think about using many other color combinations or maybe just one color with varying intensities.  You could also make this card “portrait” instead of “landscape”.  And, of course, several types of cards are perfect with this design.  I’m going to make many birthday, thinking of you, sympathy, hello, and thank you cards with this design.  They will be added to my stash of cards and ready to send when I need them.

Here is another card that I made using the same basic design.  The sentiment is from a retired set that I still love to use, and the background was created using the one ink but four levels of intensity with the color.

And here is a close-up picture of the butterfly.

I hope you have been inspired by these cards.  Have a very Happy Mother’s Day!

If you would like to purchase any of the supplies that I used for these cards, just click on the items below, and you’ll go to my on-line store.

Happy stamping!
Laurie

Some of the key products used for the cards: