Here is a little before photo. This is one of the best spaces in our home and it is so hard to photograph. I frequently want to share it or capture it in photos and I have yet to get a photo of the dining room windows that I really like. The backlighting is a challenge.
The snowflakes hang independently from the ceiling from five clips across that window space. I like them because they can last us from post-Halloween right through to Spring. I wanted to come up with something to hang from those clips that might carry us from spring through summer and then I remembered the paper butterflies I made a few years ago. Here's a link to that post, which was Pin Test #13. The link to the original tutorial I based those butterflies off us no longer works and it seems that the website no longer exists. So I found a similar tutorial that can be found here.
In the original tutorial they used brightly colored magazine pages, which is what I used the first time I made these. In the tutorial I am linking to now it's more structured towards a kids craft so they use tissue paper and pipe cleaners. I think you really can upscale or downscale these as much as you want. I photographed these outside hanging from a favorite tree as I might for a party so that the light would be better. I do love having a few decorations blowing in the breeze for a party, big or small.
I initially was going to use magazine pages again and in fact pulled a bunch and started making a butterfly but I realized I wanted bigger butterflies and maybe something a little sturdier and more classic looking. So I grabbed a pack of 12x12 inch scrapbook paper I had in nice spring colors and started pulling sheets that would work together.
If I could do one thing differently I think I would made the bottom half of the butterflies smaller. I started with a 12x12 square for the top and then cut down the bottoms to 10x10. Looking back at the others I had made before I like that the bottoms are smaller in scale than the ones I made this week. Maybe they would be better if I went 8x8 or 9x9.
Whipping these up didn't take much time at all. I easily whipped up six in about 30 minutes. I stapled each folded section in the middle to hold it together and then bound the top half and bottom half of the body together with white and silver cord, leaving enough to tie them to the ceiling and have them hang down to similar lengths as our snowflakes, not too far above our garlands.
So now we'll have some pretty butterflies fluttering around our dining room instead of sparkly snowflakes. These butterflies would make great party decorations for a baby shower or girl's birthday party and would be really sweet hanging from tree branches for a garden party. Depending on the kind of paper you use these are one-sided or two-sided. Because I used one-sided scrapbook paper mine are only pretty from the front but no one really sees them from the back in that window. If I was going to hang them where they would be twirling more or blowing in the breeze I would probably use tissue paper, two-sided scrapbook paper - something that looks pretty from all sides.
These are a fun craft to do with kids too and using pipe cleaners is an easy way to get butterfly antennae too. Making them from giant sheets of newspaper or butcher paper could be really interesting. Or you could create simple painted sheets of paper, any size with paints or watercolors and then make butterflies from them. There are so many ways to make these that using a little creativity they can be personalized in size, color, shape and materials. If you try these, let me know. I'd love to see a photo and hear how you made them your own!
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