Paper Cutout Wall Art

I’ve been meaning to make this butterfly wall art for some time but didn’t want to have to sit there and glue a hundred tiny little butterflies in place.

It’s so hard to keep track of all the different colors and sizes when gluing these butterflies so I was set on finding a better way.

I made a slight compromise and did the base bunch of butterflies already attached to the background cardstock. All I had to do with flip the wings up.

I did end up attaching another layer of varied butterflies on top but that wasn’t nearly as bad as attaching all the butterflies by hand.

That whole thing took maybe 5 minutes and I was quite pleased with myself for coming up with a hack.

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Materials for butterfly wall art

Cardstock – It is really important to use medium weight cardstock with colored cores for this art project. The wings flip up so if it has a white core, you can see a bunch of white lines. Here are some of my favorite brands:

  • Assorted Starter Pack – Basic assorted colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
  • Cricut Joy Insert Card Packs – You don’t have to use these with the Cricut Joy, they are nice material kids for cardmaking.
  • Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte-colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
  • Poptone Assorted Variety Pack – This is the perfect peppy assortment of colors of heavy cardstock. It’s a heavy cardstock assortment with colors I actually use frequently for cardmaking.
  • Seasonal Assorted Variety Pack – This is a slight variation on the Poptone assortment and has a quite few neutrals that complement almost any accent color.
  • Stardream Metallics Line – For paper crafts, the Stardream line is the go-to for a metallic shimmer finish. It is the perfect sheen to make any project pop. The core is also colored is which hard to find for metallic paper.

Frame – I didn’t have one on hand but a shadow box would work better for this project. I would recommend a 12×12 sized frame at a minimum. Otherwise, the butterflies are too small and hard to work with. I’ve gotten this one from Amazon in the past and liked it.

Glue – I would use any glue you can use with cardmaking here. Here are a few of my favorites:

Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.

Template – The SVG template (and printable version) is available for free in my resource library.

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    How to assemble the butterfly art piece

    Cutting the butterfly templates

    The best part of this project is there is minimum cleanup. I would highly recommend a fresh blue light grip mat if you have it. I find the light grip mat is easier to get cardstock off of but there are some intricate cuts to this design so it need to be a relatively fresh mat that is sticky.

    Otherwise, the standard grip mat will do. I pick off the individual butterflies with tweezers.

    Folding the wings

    I like the put the base piece on my lap so there is some curvature and I don’t have to dig for the wings.

    I just kind of pinch the wings together.

    Gluing the extra butterflies on

    After pinching all the butterflies, I just apply a little glue on the fold of the butterfly and start placing it on the base sheet.

    This part is really up to your preferences. I like to put the bigger darker ones towards the bottom and let it fan out.

    Interested in more paper cutout art this like? Check out all my SVG Membership designs:

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