Cut Out + Keep

Papercut Butterfly Specimen Box

All the beauty of a real specimen box without hurting any butterflies!

https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/papercut-butterfly-specimen-box • Posted by Cat Morley

The Silhouette Portrait is great for cutting out lots of shapes quickly which was ideal for this specimen box. I kept this design quite simple but you could get creative with shapes, using different types of butterfly or insect for a more varied box.

You will need

Project Budget
Cheap

Time

0 h 25

Difficulty

Nice & Simple
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Description

The Silhouette Portrait is great for cutting out lots of shapes quickly which was ideal for this specimen box. I kept this design quite simple but you could get creative with shapes, using different types of butterfly or insect for a more varied box.

Instructions

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    Measure your shadow box to work out how many butterflies you can fit and what size they should be.

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    Open up Silhouette Studio and pick a butterfly design you like. I used the Heart Butterfly from the shop. Scale the butterfly to the right size for your shadow box and fill up an A4 sheet with them.

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    Cut out your butterflies on black card.

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    Peel off the black butterflies and fold their wings up at either side to give them a 3D shape.

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    Now print out a second set of butterflies on an old sheet of map.

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    Peel off the map butterflies and bend up their wings at either side.

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    Match up a black card butterfly with a map butterfly so that the butterfly on the top has it's wings pointing down and the one on the top has it's wings pointing up.

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    Arrange your butterflies on the corkboard until you find a design you like

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    Pin the butterflies in place.

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    Place in your frame and enjoy!