The Enchanted Butterfly Journal

Hey, everyone! Stephanie Manuel of Smiling Sunlight, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous ‘The Enchanted Butterfly Journal’ for us this week. As you know, we feature one new Junk Journal project each week created by one of our creative team of artists. Our Design Team Members select from the 100’s of Vintage Image Bundles on our Premium Membership Site, for their creations, in order to show you beautiful ways to use those images. We hope you will be totally inspired by this series!

Therefore, please make sure you check out the video tour at the bottom of the page…please scroll all the way down to see it. Are you ready to be inspired? I will step out of the way and let Stephanie tell you all about her incredible project…

Hi everyone, it’s Stephanie from Smiling Sunlight. I’m excited to share “The Enchanted  Butterfly Journal” that I have created for the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership site. This journal is a one signature open spine journal. I made the cover out of a recycled cardboard box file and tied the pages together using pieces of saree fabric and embroidered velvet. I digitally designed the gold embossed book cover image and added a flip out envelope with a circle window enabling me to change the look of the cover whenever I place a different card into it. This month I enjoyed improving my design skills with easy to follow digital tutorials available on the Premium Membership site. It was fun designing my own unique collage journal pages, composing mystical characters and applying some cool effects such the gold embossing.

Inspired by my love for old illustrated story books, I created “The Enchanted Butterfly Journal” as a magical tale filled with interactive elements such as a pop up card, a flying butterfly bookmark and coloring pages. Once upon a time there was an enchanted butterfly traveling from a spring garden, through a mystical forest to the vast ocean and this journal tells its story. The magical
power of that butterfly is to reveal the invisible wherever it goes. So you will meet people half transformed into their animal totems, gnomes and elves coming into light and even swim with mermaids. I designed a lot of the characters in that journal starting with Lady Peacock, Chipmunk Girl on a bicycle, Deer Lady, Girl Bird and Horse Man in the garden.

You’ll come across the Drummer Boy Stag and the Unicorn Moth when entering the forest. Arriving at the sea you’ll meet Seahorse Man, Jellyfish Lady and Blue Fish Lady.

In the middle of the signature, I wanted to add a surprise so I created a pop up card representing an enchanted creature! With the head of a stag, wings made of poppy fields, body borrowed from a peacock and tail from a blue bird. Please meet the Poppy Stag Butterfly! I love how this unique creature came to life.

I was happy to find several already transformed creatures on the Graphics Fairy Premium website, through word search and in the Forest Folk bundle. My most favourites are the captivating images of the Elf Boy, the Elf Girl and the Tree Mama. I was inspired to recreate their forest universe by presenting them as if they were coming out of leaves. I applied the digital design steps from the watercolour painted tutorial on one of my own scanned leaf. Then glued the cut out printed leaf onto my plant fibre handmade paper which gives each leaf portrait a natural look.

Other magical creatures already available are from the Realm of the Blue Fairy, La Mer Sea and Mermaid Cove bundles. Using Brush Sets from the sea themed bundles for the first time was so much fun. It is with these brush sets that I designed the ocean background for the Blue Fish Lady.

Thank you for traveling along with me and the enchanted butterfly. I really loved creating this journal and hope that you enjoyed the story. May it inspire you to include more magic in your crafting. To watch the full flip through video and hear me tell the story, check out the link at the bottom of this page.

THE ENCHANTED BUTTERFLY JOURNAL SHOW & TELL VIDEO TOUR

Premium site bundles used:

Forest Folk
Realm of the Blue Fairy
The Secret Garden
Woodland Wonders
Gnomes & Wee Folk
Woodland Creatures
La Mer Sea
Sea Spray
Sea Ephemera
Posies & Porcelain
Tattered Paper Treasures 2
Antique Paper Scraps

Stephanie’s YouTube
Stephanie’s Instagram 
Stephanie’s Facebook

Check out the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership Site HERE!

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