This butterfly started as a flower for the Pink Contest, but I didn't finish it in time. I was going to place a butterfly with the flower and that's how this came to be. The flowers used in the butterfly were made from a piece of petal from a peony that I traced a new petal shape from. There were many layers for each row of petals and effects used, including transparent layers. I will show the flower at a later date.

After I competed the flower, I started looking at butterflies and got the idea to surround the wings with flowers. I used the wing of a Monarch butterfly. Since I didn't have an open wings I used the piece I traced, cut and pasted and built a new wing to be used for upper and lower wings.

I traced and copied the flower and started to outline the wings with them, resizing as I went along to get the right shape for the wing edges. After I completed the flowered edges I decided to cut around the wing veins, so they would appear as threads. Except for the threads the whole inner wing was cut out. At this point I started playing around with the color of the flower and achieved a multicolor blend.

The inner colors of the wings were done by making a copy of the wing, blurring it, changing the hue and making it transparent and placing it beneath the top layer. I thought the results had a beautiful stained glass effect. The body, head, antennae and eyes were all made from the flower.

This was all done experimenting as I went along. I hope you like the final result.

Thanks so much for stopping by. :o)
Helvi