inspriration to creation: Butterflies from Maps

I'm a big fan of butterflies, and also love to keep mementos from vacations, so when I saw this, I knew I must do something like it:

My Inspiration

image from Image Surgery.  This beautiful creation is made by Joseph Warren.



I had many maps and such to choose from, but I decided to make butterflies out of my vacation memorablia from New York, Washington D.C. and chose two things from Oklahoma that were special to me.

My Creation

1. Map of New York: It shows the Brooklyn Bridge Subway Station where my mom, sisters and I got off to go walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was pouring rain, however, so after Jana bought a $5 umbrella, we got back on the subway and went shopping intead.

2. The Star-Spangled Banner Flag from the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.  This was one of my favorite places that my family went to during our trip.  This flag was huge and protected and couldn't be photographed.  I had a flyer for the museum though and a small picture of the flag so I thought it would make an awesome butterfly.

3. The White House.  We took a tour on the day that Noah had an awful toothache.  We had planned on finding a dentist after the tour.  He was a trooper and didn't complain too badly.  It was around the green room, however, that my other son began to complain.  He needed to find a bathroom, NOW.  Umm, are there public restrooms in the White House? No.  Our tour went a little faster from that point on, much to Seth's dismay.

4. Ocktoberfest, October 2010, Tulsa, Ok.  We had just recently moved to Tulsa and missed our friends terribly.  We heard about this German festival and thought we'd invite our friends from Edmond to come and stay the night.  They did and we all had a pretty great time.  It was tiring, but all the kids got their faces painted and got to ride roller coasters and we got to see our friends.  Win for all!

5. Map of OKC area.  We lived in Edmond, OK for four years, longer than we had lived anywhere else since getting married.  We met some pretty awesome friends there and even though some have moved away, and we have moved, we have stayed close.  Edmond will always have a very special place in our hearts.

6. The Lion King, New York, Girls Trip.  This was my first Broadway show.  It was an amazing performance.  Afterward, we walked down to a diner to get something to eat and ended up walking past Lehmen Brothers.  There was a lot of commotion there-media, cameras, and such.  It was September 14, 2008 the evening before news broke that they had filed for bankruptsy. You know the rest of the story.

I used an 8x10 canvas that I already had and painted it red. This canvas had black and white patterned scrapbook paper glued onto it from another past project, but I decided I liked how it came through.  I mod-podged the canvas for texture, then antiqued it with black glaze.  For the butterflies, I just cut out a pattern and used it for all of the butterflies. Some turned out better than others.  I mod-podged the butterflies to make them less fragile, then folded them in half and glued the "body" onto the canvas.  I mod-podged the wings, front and back yet again to make them stiff.  Then I glued the top of the wings onto the canvas, with part of the wing still puffed out (I used the end of a paint brush between the butterfly and canvas to get the same amount of puff for each one). I glued the edges of the bottom wing and the "foot" too. 

This is also hanging in my bedroom.  I love this inspiration to creation project the most so far because it has so many stories attached to it.  I like the butterfly-migrate-travel connection too. 

Have a great day!!