Decoupage Butterfly

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's struggled with getting out the house with a newborn. By the time you are both washed, dressed and you've done your hair and make up (as best as you can with one hand) and the baby's changed, fed, changed and fed yet again, sometimes there really is little point leaving the house. Usually because it's now dark and the shops are closed.
So when it was my friend's birthday recently I found the card I bought her whilst I was still pregnant/organised/almost getting a decent night's sleep, but alas I had not been to shops to get her a present. She had just moved in with her boyfriend so I thought a girly decoration would be just perfect!

It was my first go at decoupaging and I learned a lot. Not everyone agrees whether you should glue the decoupage paper or the motif. I decided to give the paper a good coating of glue and pushed the motif down onto it after leaving it for a few minutes. Once that was dry and I made sure all the edges were stuck down thoroughly. Then the difficult bit, I used a craft knife to cut out the holes, this took a lot of patience! Then I repeated the whole process again for the other side of the motif, then I finished it off with some pink ribbon to hang it from.

The finished product

To make it a bit more personal I made a gift tag to go with it. I didn't have any white gift tags so I made my own by cutting round a kraft one. I then stamped the tag all over on both sides creating a pattern. I then stamped a motif and used 'To' and 'From' stamps. I cut round the motif and glued it to the gift tag. Finally, I punched a hole at the top.

I got the stamps from a magazine called Creative Stamping. Every issue comes with several free stamps, I've only bought one issue so far, but the stamps appear to be very good quality and stamp better than the ones I bought from Hobbycraft.

Do you buy any crafting magazines? If so, which ones would you recommend? Do you think the content as good as the freebies?

Mimi x