About Blackbutterfly Cards



I started making cards for pleasure in 2007, and quickly found my home was becoming swamped by cards everywhere. I decided to put some of them up for sale on a webpage in an effort to recoup some of the costs of my hobby. I called the webpage Blackbutterfly Handcrafted Cards, and it can be found at http://www.blackbutterfly2007.co.uk/

I try to take my cards to a couple of table sales or craft fairs a year, but make my cards mainly for friends and family. I would love the website sales to take off, as I nowhere near cover the costs involved in this all absorbing hobby, but for me the main thing is the pleasure I have in making my cards.
Recently I have decided to expand my blog to cover my other interests too. It's a sort of substitute for going to work and chatting to people, as due to ill health I was unable to work, and since the beginning of 2014 I am officially a pensioner.
Although I'll still show my cards, I'll also be covering my other interests and how I attempt to make ends meet day by day.

In fact anything that crosses my mind will be on here, so be prepared for waffle and a wasted five minutes as you read.
Make coffee and settle in, why don't you?




Tuesday, October 19, 2010

So lazy lately!

Well I finally got back to write a bit more. I've been so lazy lately when it comes to blogging. Partly cos I share my computer with my daughter. The trouble is, by the end of the day when I have something to put on here, I've lost the desk to her!
I have been working on a few cards tho'. A few days back I came across some new digi images from Tickled Pink. So, although I've never been asked for a Halloween Card in my life..........I made THREE!
I googled an image of a haunted house, printed it onto photo paper, and cut out my coloured images and stuck them onto the background.  The last image was of a witch, so I googled  'moon' and found another background for her. The witch was an A6 card and the other two are A5 size. The 'too cute to spook' wording was pinched from a set of stamps, but couldn't afford to get those as well...........sorry.

I haven't added wording to the witch yet, I'm playing with a couple of ideas for that, and can't make up my mind.
Yesterday I finally got the Lili of the Valley stamps I've been dying for!.............not new ones but just a couple of the little fairy stamps they do. I have just fallen for these stamp ranges ...I want them all!
 ( N.B, Xmas is coming, family type people!!)
Then browsing through the website ( as you do) I found the colouring tutorial video's for promarkers. As the demonstration stamp is one of the ones I just bought, and as I'm learning about colouring  VERY slowly, I decided to colour the stamps as per the instructions.  I ended up with 3 images I'm  extremely pleased with. Thank you, LOTV, for an excellent tutorial. May you do many more of them for clutz's like me!!
Heres the three little cards I made out of the coloured images,

So, I hope you enjoy looking at these. Personally, I'm over the moon with them. I finally feel as thought I might be getting the hang of using markers to colour.
Going to play some more now, before I have to start with housework!! Have a great day wherever you are.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

KennyK images

Today, I just want to show off my latest KennyK gothic Angelz cards. I still can't get too into Xmas at the moment, and I love doing these, if only because I need to practice colouring them in.
 I'm not very good at skin tones yet, and light and shade toning seems to come and go with me. Every time I think I've cracked the technique, it seems to go wrong again.
I have done some small Christmas cards and I may put them up later, but today I'm trying to catch up on adding missing inserts to the cards I've already done, ready for this table sale that's pending. Also, bagging and labelling needs time spent on it.


Enough waffling.........here's the cards!

Friday, October 01, 2010

At last .............I produced a card!!

Well................half a card anyway!!  I sent off for some the La Pashe Flippin' Men/Women stamp sets and they arrived this morning. As usual when I get a new stamp I can't wait for an idea I just want to stamp it up! So now I have a half finished card that I don't know how to salvage into something useable. I'll just have to put it away and come back to it at a later date. With luck some blinding flash of creativity will strike in a few weeks time.

The weather is dark and dank here, so the lighting on these pictures is abysmal. Please excuse the picture quality, my camera is bad on a GOOD day!!


The polar bears I coloured I have now made into 3 very simple cards. I do like them though.
I didn't want to do anything too fancy, as I have been invited to have a card table at my local Housing Association this month. Theres some sort of Christmas fair come table sale being held there. However from last years experience I know that people don't want to pay a lot for a card, so I'm doing some less involved ones.


 Hopefully I'm not going to end up using more cardstock and embellishment value than the prices will cover. I think also I may try some memo pad covers, and some candles again. As the sale is a little earlier this year, someone may want a small token present or tree gift, so fingers crossed!
Running late again tonight with cooking so I'll have to go now, but I'll try to keep up to date with posting this month.