The Entomologist's Dream

I love Nature, and this is an ultimate nature card. It features lots of beautiful insects and a wonderful sentiment from IndigoBlu: "If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere". I love the beauty in wild flowers. My mil can't understand why I have a large thistle at the back of the kitchen door, but the flowers are just beautiful and I love to watch the bees and butterflies coming to feed on it. Next time you see a weird looking fly, please try to appreciate its beauty instead of reaching for the spray!

"The Entomologist's Dream"

This card has a standard book construction with the pages sized to fit closely around the inner box.

"Front Panel"

The front panel is decorated with distress inks, stamping and diecut insects and flowers which are stamped, inked and brushed with Perfect Pearls to match the background.

"Inside"

The inside reveals that wonderful IndigoBlu sentiment together with an insect collection!

"Inside Front Cover"

The sentiment is stamped and embossed in clear onto a diecut panel. Distress inks are used to give different clours to the words "Nature" and "Beauty". Lots more ink and Perfect Pearls are stamped, sponged and brushed on together with some lace coloured with distress inks to match.

"The Entomologist's Dream - An Insect Collection!"

Do you recognise the box? It's from one of those sets of Kars wooden shapes. Haven't used the shapes yet, naughty! The box is covered in ink from blue and violet metallic markers which match  Tumbled Glass and Milled Lavender distress inks quite well. Each of the insects was stamped on a small square of white card twice using black archival ink and heat-embossed in clear, then stamped again onto acetate and the wings cut out. The images were each coloured with distress inks. The bodies are cut out from one set of images, shaped with an embossing tool and adhered to the other set with Pinflair for some dimension. The matching acetate wings are shaped and attached to the stamped images at the appropriate place on each body using a dab of glossy accents.

"Mr. Bumblebee"

My other half keeps bees and along with him, they have a special place in my heart! This one was cut out and adhered onto the frame edge as if he's just visiting his old friends. Next time you see a weird insect, I hope you too can see its beauty and remember, as my old Nan used to say, "it's more frightened of you than you are of it, duck" :-)

Ingredients:
IndigoBlu stamp set: Nature

Spellbinders: Fanciful Flight, Carnation Creations, Labels

empty Kars wooden shapes box

Artemio stamp sets: insects, meadow

Sizzix & Hero Arts stamp and diecut set

distress inks: Tumbled Glass, Broken China, Milled Lavender, Dusty Concorde, Chipped Sapphire

distress marker set

white inkssentials pen

archival ink: Jet Black

embossing powder: clear

gems: pale blue self-adhesive

brads: violet jewel, Papermania Midnight Fairytale embellishment set

cardstock: white 160gsm, grey 300gsm

adhesives: PVA, glossy accents, Pinflair

lace

acetate

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show - layered (this piece really is in keeping with the layered challenge - layers of meaning as well as of art!)
Try it on Tuesdays - Bingo (Brads, Flower, Diecut) plus Add a Butterfly
Stampalot - What's Your Crafty Passion?
That Craft Place - Anything Goes