Own Your Own Butterfly!

Hello guys, in today's Instructables we are going to look into how I created this interesting fun butterfly-flower piece, the materials required can be obtained easily by anyone interested in doing this. It's quite a fun project to make. Butterflies are one of the most artistic piece of nature, wings with dazzling mix of colours that never riot, not only in beauty, they are as well one of the main pollinators we know of. So gorgeous and so beneficial.

Today's 'ible has combined these two traits into one piece as simple as possible while still retaining the awe and wow's.

My favourite color when it comes to depiction of elegance being purple, I've made the unit mainly purple (the two other units has some little color variations though) and it came out just as I had imagined.

In case the colour purple "clashes with your eyes" (borrowed from Drax, lol), I also added a blank template of only outlines for the butterfly, you can design it to your taste in your painting software of choice or manually colour it after printing.

I previously wrote an instructable on making a paper caterpillar, I recommend checking it as well (in my profile), it's the last image above. Let's just say it finally went through metamorphosis into this butterfly.

Without further ado, let's dive into the making.

For the supplies we need:

~ Card stock glossy (150gsm)

~ Clothespin

~ Floral tape

~ Pipe cleaners (colours of choice)

~ Super Glue

~ Hot glue

To make the butterfly with it flapping wings, I have attached the butterfly designs to this step, a coloured (purple) one and a blank template (for those who would prefer other colours). I printed the design on a glossy 150gsm cardstock.

I used a scissors to cut out the three (each different) designs, but you can use whatever is most convenient for you, an exacto or any other tool. Make sure to take your time and not rush the cutting so you don't make a mess of the template.

Next thing I did was to take a ruler and place it along the sides of the butterflies' bodies (thorax and abdomen for specificity) then fold the wings upward. This would make the butterflies now rest on their bodies with their wings up in the air.

Then I cut a strip from the cardstock and picked a clothespin, hot glued the stripe to the underside of the clip and superglued the extending arms of the stripe to the base of the wings on both sides. Now, if you press on the clothespin, the lower jaw moves downward, pulling the wings down and when you release it, the jaw returns into place with the wings as well returing up, thus mimicking a flying butterfly.

Here, I made the second piece of the butterfly-flower unit, which is the flower itself. I had quite a few ideas on how to make this, mostly limited to the stuff I already own from previous crafts: from drinking straws or from pipe cleaners. Went with pipe cleaners as thet look more fluffy and full.

I took two purple pipe cleaners and twisted the ends together to make a longer pipe cleaner. Then took coiled it eight times around a diameter of two pen cases. Tied the protuding ends together and removed it from the core (two pen cases), then cut off excess ends. Pulled each loop into a radial symmetry and flattened them, this is the petal.

The pollen center of the flower was made by coiling the tip of a yellow pipe cleaner about four times and passing the length of it through the center of the petals.

I then moulded and shaped the petals around the pollen core that is now hot glued in place.

In the second gif image, I showed all the sides of the piece to see how it was attcahed together. The flower stalk is bent to give clearance to the front view of the butterfly while positioning the flower close enough to the butterfly's "mouth".

The extending flower stalk is cut to the length of the clothespin and hot glued to the underside of the clothespin. The backward end of the stalk is reinforced with some turns of floral tape.

Now the build is assembled and done.

I've previously made a caterpillar worm with tissue paper, now a fully grown adult butterfly, well, who knows what's next in line to be made? In the meantime though, I'm really happy with my builds, they came out solid.

To keep this butterfly pieces, you can find something pointed and clip them onto it.

Don't forget to checkout the caterpillar worm build and if you've got any questions or suggestions, please drop them.

Thanks for reading through.