Bookmarks XXIX: Monarch Migration

In the later weeks of September, if you are very lucky, you may see a Monarch elephant on its lonely migration, south to Mexico for the winter.

Another day, another color challenge involving orange. But this time it was in a nice easy fall-ish combination: Flamingo, Honey, and Coffee.

And another color challenge means another color test! I settled on Terra Cotta, Ochre, and Chestnut, although in the final project I only really used them for edging. It's better than not using them at all!

Every time I looked at this color prompt, my eye was drawn to the little flying elephant/pig thing in the lower right. I know it's only there for the background color, but... flying elephant! I have an elephant stamp. I have plenty of butterfly stamps to steal from wings from. I had to make a flying elephant, and with these lovely fall colors, I decided it was a Monarch elephant, migrating south for the winter like Monarch butterflies do. It's so big, though, that I think it must migrate in a solitary fashion.

If I'd thought of the monarch thing before stamping and embossing the wings, I probably would have tried to make them look a bit like a monarch butterfly's wings. Considering I stamped and embossed just the elephant about five times until I was happy with it, it is probably a good thing that I was only aiming for white wings and not something more complicated.

I put my elephant on this nice simple sketch from this week's challenge at Skipping Stones Design:

I hand-cut the central element without doing a lot of calculation or drawing out first, so it is either whimsical or wince-inducing depending on your preferences. Since I don't have any sort of die-cutting machine, it wasn't going to be perfect anyway -- therefore it might as well be imperfect enough that you can tell the imperfection was probably on purpose!

Here's my migrating elephant:

I allowed myself a little bit of dimensionality with the wings. Now, a bookmark still must be flat to be functional, so I didn't pop the near wing up on dimensional adhesive or anything. But it isn't glued on all the way, either, just attached at the base with a little tab -- that way it squishes flat inside a book but you can flap it about outside a book.

I'm entering this bookmark in the following challenges:

• The Play Date Cafe Challenge 150: Flamingo ... Honey ... Coffee
• Skipping Stones Design Sketch Challenge 146 (sorry, I haven't got any SSD stamps)
• CAS-ual Fridays Challenge 71: Fall Fun (colors and made-up migration)
• Simon Says Stamp: Emboss It! (with white Stampendous embossing powder)

I'm also linking it up to DL.ART's 1000-post Linky Party and Unique Crafters' Big Chance Giveaway.

Supplies: (light orange paper with little acorns is from DCWV's Autumn Melody matstack, which I cannot find online to link to)