Xanthine

I've had such trouble making a card for this challenge. I've had a series of good ideas which looked awful in real life, as opposed to in my head. Bit like my singing which also sounds good in my head. 

The butterfly challenge is X is for Xanthine. We are not to panic! - Xanthine =  The yellow colouring matter found in certain plants as in Yellow Madder. (Madder is from the Genus Rubia and has small yellow flowers, whorled leaves and a reddish brown root.) So yellow butterflies and some yellow elsewhere on the card. 
Here is what I finally made:

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I'm glad I persevered. Trust me it looks better in real life, I couldn't seem to capture the detail. 
The green is a die cut and the flowers and butterflies are cut out and stuck on. They are inked with sunshine ink and a paintbrush. I added some tiny snips of card under the wings so they are slightly raised. I didn't want to go as far as foam pads. 
The good news is it is all made from snippets so I can run over to Pixie's Snippets Playground and see what is going on. Even the base is a bit of ivory hammered card which I found while sorting out. 

 Many of you will be familiar with this sort of mess. You can't find anything and when you do it's damaged. I spent a day sorting it into piles of similar card, colour etc.

This is much better. Stored now in several boxes (still under the bed but hey ho). Coloured paper is all together and so are the scraps of each type of card - also note the labels!
No, I know it won't last but it's lovely for now.  

PS  Epecially for Mrs A. It's a fairly basic quilt as quilts go, I started it in my teens and finished it in my 20s. It has been in regular use ever since (quite a while!). The small squares are handstitched and then machined together with the larger ones. I realised I was never going to finish it, I think. It is made in the old fashioned way using  scraps of fabric and old clothes. So some bits are dresses I used to wear as a child. My store of scrap fabric is larger that my store of paper and also less used. I tried machine patchwork last year but it takes much more patience and accuracy than I have now.