Patchwork butterfly card with tutorial(ish)

I've been feeling very "Martha" lately and have been pouring over all sorts of crafty blogs and websites. Several tutorials on patchwork type quilts have been calling to me like this Crazy Patchwork Quilt by Oh, Fransson. There are so many wonderful ideas and versions of this type of quilt. But I don't quite have the confidence...or time...or skills...(do I need to keep going?) for that yet. However, after making a sweet little card for a friend yesterday, it dawned on me that I could take the idea of Fransson's patchwork quilt and use it on a card instead. Here's what happened.

How much cuter could it possibly get? I'll tell ya - None! So I'll walk you through how I made these in case you're looking for a fun project or have also made a vow to stop buying cards at the store.

I took 5 pieces of paper (The number of pieces of paper you use is how many cards you'll have. My 5th card was drying, thus she isn't in this picture. I think I'd recommend using 6 pieces so you have a nice even number of cards if you want to give them wrapped together as a gift.) The paper I used was so much fun. My superfly mommy had given me a pack of old-timey stuff for scrap booking awhile back. It had an old store receipt, a really old book of grocery store stamps, a few flashcards and some other cool stuff. And my superfly MIL also gave me an ancient, falling apart bible that I used as well. (Is it sacrilegious to use the bible for craft projects? It was just going in the trash otherwise.) Anyway...you can use any colors and patterns that float your boat.

Find a butterfly you like - I googled "butterfly clipart", then adjusted the size in Photoshop Elements, then traced it onto a piece of paper. Cut our your pattern, then trace it onto the back of the pieces of paper you're using. Cut them out and make sure that they're all the same size.

Stack them on top of each other, then cut up the middle. Hold on to the tightly because they try to move around a bit. Set the right side apart, we'll work with the left wings first.

Now for the tricky part. It's actually easy - just hard to explain. You want a patchwork look, so you'll make your first cut across the top and set that pile down. Then you're going to "shuffle" the rest of the pieces by putting the top piece on the bottom of the deck. Cut your second strip and set it down. Take the top piece of the deck and put in on the bottom. Repeat until you have cut the wings into 5 section (or however many pieces of paper you have, in my case it was 5).

Then pick up the right wings. Before cutting, put the top piece onto the bottom. Make your first cut and put that pile aside. With the stack still in your hand, take the top piece and put it onto the bottom. Cut your second section, shuffle again. Repeat until you have 5 sections of right wings.

If this makes no sense at all, refer to the Crazy Patchwork Quilt tutorial link above for another example. Your piles should now look something like this:

Now it's time to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I used some blank cards and some glue dots I already had for scrap booking. They're the kind that roll on and they worked beautifully, but a spray adhesive might also be a good choice. Basically you just take the top layer from each pile and glue them onto the card. If your cuts, like mine, were not exactly perfect, then Madame Butterfly might look something like this. Make sure as you're gluing the pieces on the card that the outside edges match up. Don't worry about the middle quite as much because we're going to cover that up. Here's what you'll have now:

Then use some scrap pieces to cut out an oblong body for the butterfly. I also glued a little button head on her because I think everything is better with buttons. And voila...

Seriously - somebody get me a thesaurus because I can't think of any other word than C-U-T-E!