A 'zentangle' style card

A lovely blogging buddy just very recently gifted me a pre-loved 'Zentangle style' stamp, which she thought would be good for paper piecing - and it has a butterfly on it!!

In the end, I also added pearls as well - but just couldn't run to patterned paper and peach (the other two options) without losing sight of the bright, modern and funky card I had in mind. Adding the pearls was stretching it a bit, but I do think they work OK-ish:

I used:

- white DL card

- a slightly smaller layer of white card cut to size, which I edged right round for about half an inch or a bit less, using a purple Pro marker (didn't have any bright enough purple card here - and this is one trick I do keep forgetting to use!)

- at the same time I also swiped the purple Pro marker over a couple of snippets of white card - in case my trimming went wrong! 

- glued the 'purple edged' card onto the card front

- then took a piece of white card not yet trimmed to size and, using the Misti, stamped the lovely floral image and a sentiment in Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink in the centre. Thanks to Kath I now know that the pre-loved stamp set is made by Woodware and is called 'Tulip Doodle'

- whilst the Misti was set up I also stamped the floral 'Zentangle' image onto paper in almost neon shades of pink and green (goodness knows how old they are!) - as well as the butterfly onto little pieces of purple card I'd coloured with Pro markers. Over time I've learned that if you do have enough paper/card then it's really best to stamp extra in case of mistakes when trimming the images for paper piecing

- then trimmed the white card panel with the stamped image and sentiment down to size, before going any further

- next carefully trimmed around the leaves, flowers and butterfly that had been stamped onto coloured paper/card (I use very small Fiskars embroidery scissors, kept purely for paper cutting). Then ran a black Whispers pen around the edges just to keep the outlines as crisp as possible (if you do this, don't use a Pro marker or similar, as it will bleed - I learned this the hard way a very long time ago!)

- using a Zig glue pen (the bullet shaped one where you can apply wide or very narrow lines of glue), I then, step by step, added glue to the card front images and popped the leaves, flower heads and butterfly in place

- final touch, little pearls on the stems where the stamp design had already drawn circles as well as on the centre of the butterfly's body- just to add dimension

I realised afterwards that I could have just pretended to do some paper piecing and used Pro markers to do the colouring - so here's the proof:

Such a pretty stamp - I love it!