Butterfly Memories

When I was little we lived upstairs from my grandparents.  I remember my grandfather had a shiny black Chrysler complete with the wings in the back.  There was lots of silver chrome on it too, and it usually was parked in the driveway in front of the garage because he was a big man and once you put it in the garage there was not much room to open the door for him to get out.

We would clambered down the stairs and out the front door, run up the driveway side of the house past the car to the back yard to play.   On one such day I stopped in my tracks because there was a butterfly on the ground in front of the car.  A monarch butterfly. 

Apparently it had gotten caught in the grill of the car and couldn't escape until the car came to rest.  It was slightly damaged and the wings pulsed a little, but it was the first opportunity I can remember to really see a butterfly up close.  I carefully picked it up and I know that it eventually died, but I had it for some time in a box.

I was reminded of this the other day as I was returning from getting my hair cut and a butterfly flew in front of  the truck on the way home.  It was just lazily flying along and sadly there was nothing I could do to avoid it.  I wondered if it would be in the grill of the truck when I got home, but it was not.  Still it inspired me to make this card.

I have some mat board scraps that I got from my blogging friend Michelle's aunt and I've been meaning to make something for her from it as a thank you.  On my trek up to the pool that evening my eyes caught site of these sparkly stones amongst those that we have surrounding the pool.  Believe me, they are much prettier IRL or I would not have used them, but I thought that they would make a great flower or butterfly and since I was thinking about butterflies this is how it turned out.  I put the mat board together with the rocks (used Crystal Effects to attach them), some silver foil tape and some textural ribbon for this card.  

The orange, basketball-like textured mat board was also in the scraps I got.  So marrying the orange and black brought my monarch butterfly together.... sort of.  I used some snippets of silver elastic cord for the antenna and popped up the butterfly panel.  After I mounted that to the orange, I put the whole thing on some Confetti Cream paper to complete the card.

Yes, this will be a little bulky to mail, but I have a little something else to send with it, so it will be safely bubble wrapped!