Butterfly fans of all ages and vintage enthusiasts will admire a brightly-colored garland featuring old-fashioned butterfly clip art and decorative glitter. The design is perfect for birthday parties, Victorian-inspired themes, and other butterfly-friendly zones.
Make a miniature garland for a creative necklace or as a decorative touch on a gift package; string along the top of a holiday stocking or inside a dollhouse. Simply alter the ribbon or cord used to string the garland together to match the desired size and weight.
Choosing the Butterflies
Construct the butterfly garland using vintage-style clip art available online. A variety of sites offer creative butterfly pictures for personal use. Royalty-free images are available from Vintage Holiday Crafts, with brightly-colored butterflies in large, easy-to-print pictures.
At Free Clip Art Pictures, several creative butterfly images are available for personal use with a photographic theme. The images will print large or small, making them an excellent choice for crafting the garland.
Print any of these images in full color, or print in black and white and customize the colors. Watercolors, markers, colored pencils, and crayons make perfect choices for adding color to plain images. Experienced crafters may prefer to use the butterflies as altered art creations, cutting out sections of the intricate wing design with an X-Acto knife and gluing scraps of colored or patterned paper behind these spaces for a textured look.
Creating the Garland
Print the images on sturdy cardstock to create long-lasting butterflies that won't curl or crinkle easily. For maximum strength, glue the paper or card stock butterflies to a lightweight cardboard backing, then carefully cut them out along the edges.
Use a small hole punch to penetrate the topmost edge of each butterfly wing to string them together. Use a length of ribbon, twine, or decorative holiday garland to string the butterflies together for display. Space the butterflies apart and tie knots behind each hole to keep the butterflies from slipping out of place.
Decorating the Butterflies
Squirt a thin ribbon of glue around the edge of each butterfly or lightly daub it around the edges with a paintbrush. Lay the butterflies on the newspaper and sprinkle clear or colored glitter heavily around the edges. Tap the butterflies gently to remove excess glitter, then allow the glue to dry.
Knot the ends of the garland into loops for hanging it up. Display the garland across a mantelpiece, windowsill, or other traditional garland site.
Sarah Briggs - For the last two years, I have designed primitive dolls and folk art sculptures (such as Edwin Drood and the Ghost of Marley) for Cordwood ...
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