An alternate title to this post could be, “How to Turn Birthday Decor Into Art.” Or, I could have titled it: “The Time I Spent 50 Gajillion Hours on a Silly Project.”
Before we moved to Georgia, my daughter had a “Rainbow Butterfly” themed birthday party. There might have been unicorns in there too. It’s hard to pick just one favorite thing when you are turning six.
Anyway, I had this brilliant idea to make it look like a swarm of butterflies were passing by our window. It wasn’t a hard project. It involved construction paper, tape and a butterfly hole punch
Anyway, I left those butterflies up for a good month after the party. Partly because it took me so long to put them up there, but mainly because I didn’t want to wash the windows after I removed all of the tape. Those are individual window panes, folks! They were a pain to clean. Wait, was that a pun? Ha!
It also made me a little sick to let all of that time and hard work go to waste. So, I made the emotionally rational decision to turn my paper butterflies into a piece of art. I had a huge frame sitting in our basement that did not have any glass in it that would be perfect for what I had in mind. (The reason the glass (aka mirror) is missing is an entirely different story.)
I spray painted the frame and cardboard backing of the frame black and then armed with my glue gun, a million glue sticks and more shows on Netflix, I began glueing all my butterflies on the board. The butterflies are pinched slightly so that it looks like they are in flight. Here’s how it turned out:
There was no complicated process here. I simply eyeballed how many butterflies would fit on a row. There was a mess-up on the first row, but I soldiered on and fixed it on the second row so that the butterflies had more breathing space. After that, it was as simple as lining the butterflies up and glueing away.
Since I haven’t figured out a good way to not get little strings of glue everywhere when using a glue gun, you’ll still find them on the artwork today. I picked a lot of them off, but since my perfectionistic tendencies run on the very low side of the scale, I ignored the rest of them. 🙂
In person, the piece does make quite a statement. It’s colorful and since the butterflies aren’t under glass there’s a nice 3-D effect going on.
I don’t know that this piece of artwork “goes” with my decor. It’s definitely more whimsical and brighter than anything else I have going on. Yet, it makes me happy. Isn’t that the point of art, to evoke some sort of emotional response? There’s some sentiment behind the piece too because it reminds me of a beautiful moment in my daughter’s life. There’s also the fact that I can’t quite seem to let go of the fact that I spent forever and a day punching out and attaching and reattaching those darn butterflies. Whatever the reason, it’s pretty. It’s different. It’s unexpected. Somehow, when something make you happy in your home, it just seems to work.
Thank you for reading! Here are some other posts you might enjoy!
Colorful Wall in Girl’s Room – update on this butterfly art
Display Shelf from a Wine Rack for a kid’s room
*affiliate link in this post*