Tuesday 1 November 2016

Nuvo Embellished Cascading Butterflies :D


A fun birthday card combining lots of different #nuvo products from #tonicstudios including gilding flakes, pure sheen glitter, gloss crystal drops, and also the translucent jewel drops :D I had soooo much fun playing with all these products to create this card!! :D Nuvo products are amazing!!! especially the Crystal, Glitter and Jewel drops (wouldn't it be fantastic to own the whole range!! :D), however the gilding flakes are fantastic too, such big flakes and they are much lighter and more reflective than others I've used in the past :D I really loved experimenting and mixing the different types of Nuvo drops together, where I've swirled some Gloss Crystal on top of the Translucent Jewel in the enamel dots I created, because the under portion is translucent the top swirl casts a shadow onto the card below (if that makes sense) I don't know any other product that would allow you to create such a cool unique effect :D

The colours used for the green and gold card:
Woodland Green Gloss Crystal Drops, Key Lime Translucent Jewel Drops, Gold Pure Sheen Glitter and Radiant Gold Gilding Flakes :D
The colours used for the pink and gold version (photographed below):
Bubblegum Blush Gloss Crystal Drops, Strawberry Coulis Translucent Jewel Drops, Gold Pure Sheen Glitter and Radiant Gold Gilding Flakes :D

For the outline of the butterflies I used a Spellbinders die called Cascading Butterflies, they also do a star version and a circle version, but I decided to buy the butterflies, because butterflies are the best :D (But if you want to re-create something like this, have a look through all the dies you own, because you'll be surprised how many have lovely little apertures that would work brilliantly for this :D) I die-cut this twice from white card, and then I also cut the four larger butterflies from white card that I had stuck a piece of wide double sided tape to :D I adhered one outline image to my front panel (don't forget to save all the interior butterflies for another project, I will definitely be doing this so watch out for that :D) (and save the other outline to stick over the top once all the drops have dried, this will hide any mess and give a crisp look :D) then I started embellishing the sticky butterflies. I used a large and medium butterfly to add the gilding flakes to, first peel off the backing from the double sided tape, then carefully open the tub of flakes and dab a few onto the exposed adhesive, rub gently with your fingers to make sure the flakes are in contact with the adhesive, then use a small piece of rub it scrub it pad (from Ranger) to burnish the flakes into the tape and remove the excess :D For the other two butterflies, I again removed the backing, then I dumped on a load of the gorgeous gold pure sheen glitter and again burnished this in, but this time with my finger (Top Tip: When working with glitter like this, Pledge dry dusting cloths are a life saver as you can rub them over your die-cut and it will remove any excess glitter, and its also great for your hands and work surface too, I cut mine into tiny pieces, that's what I was using in the video :D)

I then decided where I wanted these gold butterflies to go and re positioned them back into the right apertures :D For the final butterflies I then used a mixture of the gloss crystals drops and the translucent jewel drops... I left a couple of butterflies with solid gloss, filled a couple in completely with the jewel and then used a pokey tool to pick up some of the gloss colour and swirl it in, and then I also added drops of both colours to one and swirled them around :D I like the way all three ways came out :D One thing to note is that because this is a wet medium, and your applying a reasonable amount to cover the butterfly, the card will buckle a little (you can tape your card down and this does prevent it slightly but not completely) and because of this when the drops dry they tend to crack, HOWEVER, I really liked the way this looks, it wasn't what I was planning, but its a cool unique effect that I'll probably only be able to achieve with the Nuvo drops as there chemical formula seems to make the dry quite brittle compared to Cosmic Shimmer PVA glues which are more flexible once dry :D To create the enamel dot embellishments I used the backing from a piece of sticky sheet (got this tip from Jodie in one of the Nuvo drop videos on the Tonic Studios YouTube channel :D) I made a few mixed drops where I put down a drop of the Jewel drops first then a tiny drop of the Gloss Crystal drops on top and swirled them together with a pokey tool, and then I also made a few in both the separate colours too :D I love that you can make them really tiny!! I did some minute Woodland Green ones, I've seen gems that small, but I've never seen enamel dots that tiny!! :D I can't wait to keep playing with these amazing products!! Hope you liked the card :D

To see the process behind this green and gold card, please watch my YouTube video below, or over on my channel CRaFTi PoTeNTiAl :D I also made a pink and gold version which you can see at the end of the video and in the photos below :D



Tonnes more photos below showing close ups of the different Nuvo products, and also a Thank you card which I did in pink and gold tones :D



I made this pink and gold version to thank the amazingly generous people at Tonic for sending me a few of their products to use in my videos, thank you soooo much!! :D