Madame Butterfly

I must say I struggled a little bit with the current butterflyspotchallenge - 3 design papers, and I'm such a less is more kind of person! Especially, I like not to mix too many different colours and patterns as I think it steals the attention from the message a card brings.
Yesterday however, I found bumblebutton, a wonderful collection of vintage images. Among them, a stunning lady in black and white.
I decided to go through my papers to see if I had any matching black and/or white papers. After searching, comparing, searching some more, putting back and taking them out again, I found a few sheets that I thought would do. For the decorations, I repeated the whole procedure once more. The outcome is a black and white card with roses and butterflies. 

In general, when I start a paper project, I like to go through my stuff and find the matching pieces before I start working. I often change minor things while working - when I see things don't fit the way I imagined, when I remember that other piece that might fit in here, when I see the half-finished card and realize I'd like to use another punch or a different ribbon... But at least for the main tools like papers, I can say that I need to have them together before I start my project.
For the arrangement of the cards however, I usually don't make any plans or sketches - they just "happen". Well, except in a sketch challenge ;) For my other projects, I start working with the central piece (an image, a stitched ornament...) and then work my way to the backgrounds and embellishments, comparing colours, shapes and materials.

So, once I have chosen the papers, I had to arrange them and chose the ribbon. Then came the embellishments. I was sure about using white roses, but till the end I couldn't decide whether to use white or black leaves with them. As you see, I decided to punch them in white.

I was sure about using butterflies, too, but again - should it be a black or a white one, a small or a huge one? Finally, I've chosen both colours and my big punch. In the very end, I remembered I must have a single black pearl somewhere, a leftover from a sympathy card. I always keep such remains, thinking I *might* need them some day. Today, I did - black pearl on the white butterfly, white on the black one.

Unfortunately, the shimmering floral pattern in the white paper isn't quite visible on the photos. In reality, it's lovely.

Nature is becoming black and white, too, especially with the clouds not going away for days.

challenges:

- fan-tastic tuesday: add one butterfly

- butterflyspotchallenge: 3 design papers
- crafts4eternity: ribbon and lace
- craftycatzweeklychallenge: ribbon and/or lace
- papertakeweekly: anything goes
- sweatpeastampers: let us remember/sympathy/thinking of you
- fabnfunky: use 3 embellishments
- bastel-traum: black/white
- comeandgetitchallenge: pearls and lace
- thatcraftplace: anything goes
- 4craftychicks: bingo B - free (image), ribbon, pearls, black/white, circles (roses)
- wordartwednesday