Butterfly wreath

Malayna and I created a pretty butterfly wreath for the front door yesterday. What a fun, easy project (and perfect for a rainy day)! This was a good one for us to work on together, since it's painting and collage - I love to collage and Malayna loves to paint. I was inspired by Alisa Burke's butterfly wreath tutorial, but we did ours a little differently. I've had her tutorial bookmarked for months - it's gorgeous!

Here are the steps we took: First, I drew a butterfly on cardstock. Alisa's wreath has lots of different sizes and shapes, but to make this go faster (I'm an impatient crafter) I chose one butterfly shape to work with. If you don't want to draw your own butterfly, just do a search for "butterfly silhouette clip art." You can print one out from your computer and use that as a template.

Second, I tore pages from an old book. I have two copies of Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar. (I think Jimmy and I each had one in college.) I had to be careful which pages I tore out since Malayna can read and this book has some racy sections! After I had a bunch of pages ready, I traced a few butterflies onto the pages. Then I gave a few to Malayna to paint with watercolors.

While she was painting, I was wrapping a styrofoam wreath frame with strips of book pages. I painted Modge Podge onto the strips and then wrapped them around the form. I wasn't too careful about it (there are lots of wrinkles) since it would mostly be covered with butterflies. After it was completely wrapped, I covered the entire thing with a layer Modge Podge.

After watching Malayna paint a few butterflies, I realized that it would go faster if I didn't put a butterfly shape on the page first. So I just gave her a few pages without the shapes on them and told her to paint some color on them. After the paint dryed, I then traced the butterfly template on the painted pages with a black Sharpie. Much easier and much faster!

When she finished painting a bunch of pages, the rain had stopped and she was itching to go play outside! So I got busy tracing, cutting and doodling. I also used some watercolor pens to draw the circles. When they were all finished, I glued them to the wreath form. Done!

A pretty spring wreath for the front door!