Julie Finn
If you don’t love butterflies, then you’re probably not a good person deep down inside.
Butterflies are beautiful, and their ephemerality is a reminder of the graces and the inevitabilities of the seasons.
Because of their beauty, their symmetry, their simplicity – and because of what the often represent to us of beauty and simplicity and freedom – people have long created crafts that symbolize the butterfly.
Some crafts are outstanding works of art, some are excellent activities to do with children, and some are of unmitigated practicality. Here are five of my favorites:
- Balancing Butterflies. Make a traditional balancing butterfly or an updated version in a balancing butterfly mobile. It’s science masquerading as a magic trick!
- Feather Butterfly. Sometimes you never know where you might find your next inspiration, and that’s my excuse for reading lots of random crafts books. But that habit is what enables me to tell you that, even though you may not be a hat maker (as I am not), if you read Saturday Night Hats, by Eugenia Kim (as I have), you will see a mini-tute in that book for making a butterfly! Out of feathers! And you do not, by any means, have to put that feather butterfly on a hat.
- Stenciled Butterflies. This reverse stenciled butterfly dress from Lil Blue Boo is just as easy, and almost as fool-proof, as freezer paper stenciling, and the materials list includes liquid fabric paint and spray bottles! Fun!
- More Stenciled Butterflies. Or, you could just use freezer paper stencils for an easy go-to project–especially fine for mitchy-matchies, since you get one positive stencil image and one negative stencil image from each cut stencil.
- Leaf Butterfly. Imagine a butterfly compiled from pressed leaves and flowers, resting on a cloudy sky background torn from a glossy magazine. Now go make it!
