butterfly specimen placeholder art

These frames are the best option we found for framing our monthly photo booth strips (something we started doing regularly about the time of the kiddo's first birthday, but only occasionally before then).

Afraid they'd stop carrying these glass-backed frames, I bought ahead and ended up with an empty frame on my wall. I decided to fill the empty one with some placeholder art until we have photo strips to fill that frame as well. (The glass-backed frames I used for this project are available from Target.)

This is a deceptively easy project. Find some butterfly art in a magazine or as a copyright-free image on-line. Print it out.

Cut carefully. Make sure your cuts aren't too straight or choppy, for the most naturalistic appearance possible. Go ahead and cut off the antennae.

Gather a spool of heavy thread, some double-sided tape, and your butterfly.

Cut a length of thread. Bend and twist at the center, and attach to the back of your cut-out butterfly using a tiny piece of the tape (this will also loosely hold the butterfly to the back pane of glass to help avoid slippage).

Flip over and check placement. Adjust if necessary.

Place in frame, sandwiching the butterflies between two pieces of glass.

I used three different butterflies to mimic the look of a specimen collection; you could switch it up even more and use three different colors of butterflies, or a dozen in different shapes and sizes.

The thread antennae give these a very realistic appearance, especially if you just let them lay, rather than adjusting them until they're perfectly symmetrical.

And in less than a typical nap period, it's done, and ready to hang on your wall . . . permanently, or until something better comes along!

Thanks for reading!

p.s. you can make these pictures larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that.


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