My Butterfly Journal... a tutorial

It has been a while since I get to scrap just for the sake of creating my way, in my style. I have had to alter my work to meet the needs of many of my customers, but yesterday I got to REALLY enjoy creating a journal. I took pictures along the way, so that if you get inspired, you too would be able to create one just like it. Here is the finished product:The quote on the cover says: Like the Butterfly I Will Awaken in HIS Time. I fell in love with the Botanica paper from Graphic 45 and had no other option than to give in to the temptation of creating a journal that I can add pages to. So the final outcome of the entire album is this:

Page 1 and 2:
These pages have some of my favorite elements in them: butterflies, starfish, seashells... My favorite detail in this page is this one:I love the texture and the dimension that the starfish adds here... :)

Pages 3 and 4:Out of these pages it is a no brainer that the butterfly is my FAVORITE!! I truly believe that I experienced a metamorphosis when I met Christ as my Savior, so I tend to really identify myself with them.

I tried to make it seem as if it was ready to take off... (That is how I usually feel LOL)

Pages 5 and 6:

Once again, the starfish takes my heart away... :)



And now for the Tutorial:

To make the actual album I cut out the shape of the butterfly using the cricut and used the cutout to trace the image onto chipboard.Once I cut out the Butterfly, I drew with a pencil where I wanted the division of colors:
I did not want the butterfly to look traditional so I decided that instead of using entire sheets of paper to cover the chipboard, I should tear paper into tiny pieces and cover it that way.

I began close to the edges and then proceeded to fill in each area according to the color and the pattern I chose for that area. Notice that I left an area without covering... To cover that I used the Graphic 45 number/letter sheet that is double sided. I really liked the polka-dot pattern that was on the back of the sheet, so it turned out to be perfect to cover this area.Once I did that, I inked the butterfly with different Distress Inks and I drew the "veins" with a black pen following the design the Graphic 45 paper butterflies had. These steps you follow twice: to create the front and back cover of the album. (This is what the finished back cover looks like. Since it is meant to be a journal, I did not want the back of the album to be too bulky.) This is the finished cover and a close up of the starfish:

To cover each page, I used the cricut to cut the shape of the butterfly and Glossy accents to adhere it. Because it is a journal, and I am completely inept when it comes to writing neatly, I decided to take some pages from my other journal and tear them in order to add them to the chipboard.
I then proceeded to add the journaling page along with other embellishments and gave each page a distressed look using Distress Inks.I hope you lied my little album and the picture tutorial. I am going to try to create a slideshow with closeups of all the pages so that you can recreate the album (if interested.) Please leave me your comments telling me what you think... (they mean the world to me :)

Love in Christ,

Nana


“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be blessed!” (Job 1:21)