Ode to the Blue Morpho

Butterfly closed

The Blue Morpho

So bright and beautiful

when you are in flight,

but when you stop to rest

you disappear from sight

That's my lame attempt at an ode to the Blue Morpho.  I wanted to title this post Ode to the Blue Morpho so I felt the post should include a poem. That's the best I could come up with in a couple of minutes.

This card was inspired by the beautiful Blue Morpho butterfly, which we learned about at one of our favourite places to visit in the summer - the Butterfly House at the Newfoundland Insectarium. If you are ever in the area, you must go visit.

When we were visiting there a couple of years ago we were fascinated by these beautiful blue butterflies that were fluttering all around, but when we tried to get a sight of one pitched it was like it just disappeared. One of the employees explained to us that this is because one side of the butterfly's wings has this beautiful blue colour, but on the other side it is a molted brown colour. You can only see the blue when the butterfly is flying, because when it pitches it closes up its wings, showing only the molted brown side of the wings.

When I was making the butterfly decoration/stands that I shared in yesterday's post, I had to fold in half the butterflies that I cut using my Big Shot and the Butterfly Thinlits Dies. I really liked the look of the butterflies folded in half and decided I wanted to incorporate a folded butterfly into a card.

When I was playing with that idea I thought about the Blue Morpho and decided to attempt to make a butterfly similar to the Blue Morpho, brown on the outside, and blue inside. I cut the butterfly out of whisper white cardstock, laid it flat on a paper towel and sponged one side of it with Baked Brown Sugar and then flipped it over and sponged the other side of it with Tempting Turquoise. Then I went along the edges of the butterfly with my Early Espresso Stampin' Write Marker and coloured the body of the butterfly on both sides with the same colour.

I folded the butterfly in half and adhered just one wing to the card front, allowing the other wing to flap freely.

Butterfly Open

I would put this card in an envelope with the butterfly closed and then allow the butterfly to flap open when the card is taken out of the envelope.

The patterned paper on the card front is actually a piece that I made a while back when I was making the Flowers and Butterflies for a Card Swap. You will find directions on how I made it on the blog post linked in this paragraph. I made one more card front than I needed at that time so I tucked the extra one away to use another time, and I thought it worked perfectly for this card. I simply adhered the piece to a whisper white card base.