Papercut Butterfly Specimen Box

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

Posted by Cat Morley

About

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.

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You Will Need (5 things)

  • Shadow Box
  • Square of Corkboard slightly smaller than your shadow box
  • Black Card
  • Map(s)
  • Pins

Steps (10 steps, 25 minutes)

  1. 1

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

  2. 2

    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.

  3. 3

    Cut out your butterflies on black card.

  4. 4

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

  5. 5

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

  6. 6

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

  7. 7

    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.

  8. 8

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

  9. 9

    Pin the butterflies in place.

  10. 10

    Place in your frame and enjoy!