Craft Stamp review - Visible Image Butterfly stamps (Large and Small)

Good morning all and welcome to my first review of the year. Today I am going to be taking a closer look at the Visible Image butterfly stamps. These have become one of my most favourite and well used stamps. I have used it in multiple ways over the couple of years I have owned the stamp and it features in many of my 2015 collection of cards. Lets have a look at them now and see how the stamp was used.

 In this first card, the butterfly was stamped in black, shaded using spectrum noir markers and then carefully fussy cut out. The Butterfly body was given a row of pearls and then the body was glued down to the backing card, with the wings being pushed up (This is my favourite way to display this stamp as you will see!)

 A similar example where the butterfly has been stamped, shaded and then cut out is this card. What I love about the stamp is that the butterfly is so amazingly detailed, but yet the outline is so simple and very easy to fussy cut out.

In this example, the butterfly was embossed in a row on the backing card and then a further embossed butterfly was fussy cut and added in 3D style to the top of the centre butterfly. In this example, it was the small butterfly stamp used.

And finally, from my 2015 collection of cards, this butterfly was embossed in black on to vellum and then coloured with spectrum noir markers on both the front and the reverse. This made the colours stand out so much more, but yet still retain that translucent feel.

I have to say, I would never normally use a single stamp for four cards in a collection, but I actually feel that with this stamp, each way of using it makes it look completely different, as though it is a different stamp being used.

It is not just my 2015 final collection that has featured these amazing stamps - I also have special commissioned cards as well as some competition entries.

As you can see, it can be used as a background stamp, masked and painted over, embossed, stamped, fussy cut out - the possibilities are endless!

The stamps themselves are very high quality. They come in their own CD style pocket with the picture of the stamp in front. Despite using mine frequently, they still retain their perfect shape and sharpness of details. Mine have discoloured ever so slightly as would be expected - to me, this is a sign of a well used stamp! These are so reasonably priced, coming in at just £3.49 for the large butterfly and £2.49 for the small butterfly. I would suggest purchasing both because there have been a number of times that I have gone to use the big one and realised for that project their is not enough space and so have been able to go straight for the smaller one.

                                       

No review would at all be complete without creating another card - I tried to look and see what I hadn't done with them yet and I decided to try a bit of water colouring and partial cutting! By water colouring, I mean the really simp cheating way of using distress markers!

I began with a piece of A6 white card and folded it in half - I was wanting just a mini card. I inked up my large butterfly with Pine Needles distress marker and stamped it at an angle on my card, with the tip of the wing right up to the edge. 

I created some watercolours by drawing a squiggle of both pine needles and forest moss on my craft sheet then added water. As I began adding this to my card, the stamped image also reacted with the water and the lines began to soften. I also added a few specs of pickled raspberry too in order to add a bit more colour. I tried not to add too much before leaving to dry. Once partially erie, I decided to add a light colour wash around the butterfly just to add a bit more dimension. It was then left to dry completely.

Afterwards, I used my paper cutter to slice a portion off the card at the top and bottom of the butterfly and then fussy cut the rest out.

The finished card was given some sequins to add the final touch of sparkle and of course a sentiment propped up on foam pads.

The finished result - another successful 'Visible Image Butterfly Card.'

Thank you for joining me and I hope this has inspired you to purchase these stamps!

Laura xx