The Butterfly Effect

I’m not sure how it happened, it certainly wasn’t planned, but our living room seems to have a bit of a butterfly theme going on. I’m sure you’ve all already seen the large butterfly picture over our sofa.

We also have this quilled butterfly art which is currently on one of the shelves.

This is our newest butterfly themed art addition in the room.

This is how we made it

As we knew where we wanted to hang the picture, we started by deciding on the final size and scale of the butterfly art before preparing a variety of butterfly templates.

Then, using the templates we cut out loads and loads of little butterflies and pinned them onto some foam board. As we want the art to be slightly three-dimensional, we also folded all the butterflies along the centre to give a fluttery effect.

After cutting out all the butterflies we prepared the back of the picture. So that we could easily pin the butterflies, we used some foam board covered in black cardboard. The board is soft enough for us to pin the butterflies onto, but rigid enough to still form a stable back to the picture.

Then for the quickest part of the process – the actual pinning.

After attaching just a few of the paper butterfly art is already starting to take shape. And after pinning a lot more this is the result.

The picture has a special meaning to us, as we cut the butterflies out of a calendar with pictures of the area where we both used to live and first met. If you look closely you can recognise bits of buildings and landscapes.

It’s kind of like a giant colourful butterfly jigsaw of memories.

We love the splash of colour it adds to the room, especially as everything was starting to get a bit too matchy-matchy.

Do you also have butterfly art? Do you also make your own art?