When Does Crafting Cross the Line into Crazy?

When does crafting cross the line into crazy? This question swims around in my subconscious mind but peeked its snout above the waves recently and squeaked at me like a dolphin laughing. Have I, indeed, crossed the line?

Dave Barry says that hobby is just another word for mental illness. Perhaps he's right.

In the past six months or so, these three sets jumped into my carts for three different orders. A sensible person might ask why this would happen.

Hero Arts Color Layering Butterflies; Clearly Besotted
Everything Changes and A Better You

Given my recent renouncing of layered stamping, my ownership of these three sets is particularly perplexing. All three are intended for layered use. All three contain butterfly images, for a total of 22 butterflies or layers thereof.

Who needs this many butterflies?

Apparently I do. It may or may not have anything to do with my friend who passed away in November. Karen loved butterflies, and she sent lots of Hallmark cards. We're starting a card shop at church soon full of handmade cards (proceeds going to the church, of course) in Karen's memory. It seems I'm subconsciously stocking up on butterflies with the idea of making cards for church.

Oh, that makes my crazy sound relatively sane, doesn't it!

Here's my rationalization for buying each of these sets. The Hero Arts set was the first color-layering set I ordered from Hero Arts. It's actually fairly easy to line up two layers...it's adding the third that makes me lose my mind. I also love that the butterfly bodies are separate from the wings. Why don't all butterfly stamp sets do this? It's a mystery.

Everything Changes called to me NOT for layering possibilities but for those delightful outlines combined with solid images. That feature has appealed to me lately because it increases the design versatility of sets so very much. Stamp designers take note.

Finally, A Better You appealed because I suspected that stamping the line layers on the block layers would be relatively easy (it is) and because I wanted to embellish the dickens out of those dots on the lines.

Is this crazy? You be the judge.

Let's face it: we're all a bit mad around here.

In A Better You, the line images need not be stamped with the block images...if you combine them with the butterfly bodies from Hero Arts, which is what happened for today's two cards.

The dots are embellished with Sakura Stardust pens, which are extremely shimmery and oh so easy to use. The ink is opaque, so you can layer different colors...here, I used the green Sakura pen and Memento Bahama blue ink.

The second card uses a tone-on-tone effect, with Hero Arts dark quartz ink under dots of Sakura Stardust red, which to my eye leans toward orange-red rather than violet-red. The ribbon matched perfectly and was a free gift with an order from Ellen Hutson.

Crazy or not, I sure am having fun with all the butterflies! What images are you enjoying these days? Please share! You might give the rest of us some ideas for our next obsession order.

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts, Clearly Besotted
ink: various
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: Sakura Stardust pens, ribbon