Cotton Bag: Red Admiral

I feel that I've been neglecting the "real" butterflies. Here's one familiar to many - the Red Admiral. This large, distinctive butterfly is a summer migrant to Britain; its favourite food is nettles.
More information can be found here.

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Cotton Bag: Red Celtic Dragon Butterfly

I don't make any claims for the authentic Welshness of this one, but it will soon be on its way to Wales, to be put through its paces by one of my friends.

It was done with "ordinary" wax crayons, as per my last post. The results are indistinguishable from the fabric wax crayons at this stage.

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Cotton Bag: Celtic Dragon Butterfly

I was thinking of doing another fantasy butterfly, but I wasn't sure where I'd go with it. Fortunately, I was struck with inspiration at work today. This is based on the Common Blue template.

Only one bag left to decorate...

EDIT(1) And this one is SOLD.

EDIT(2) However, I do have a few large, plain handkerchiefs; here's one that almost matches the bag. I decorated it in pen, because the idea of trying to blow your nose on a waxed surface is just plain wrong. Just in time for the end of the hayfever season...

>Atchoo!<

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Cotton Bags: Common Blue and Camberwell Beauty

The Common Blue is, as you might imagine from its name, widespread throughout the UK. It is, apparently, our most common blue butterfly. Be that as it may, I'm not sure that I see them very often, but that stunning colour is always a treat to encounter. The male is all blue (well, apart from a few black lines and those fuzzy white edges), but the female - while less brilliant - is actually more colourful, with her soft grey blending into blue, and those delightful orange spots.

The Camberwell Beauty, on the other hand, is a rare migrant visitor to these isles; . As might be expected, the name given is the insect's British name (Camberwell is a district of South London). Its Latin name is Nymphalis antiopa, but in North Europe (from whence it migrates to the UK), it is known, variously, as "Trauermantel" (German), "sorgmantel" (Swedish), and "Sørgekåpen" (Norwegian). These names translate to "Mourning Coat", which is the name given to the creature in North America.

Mr. Common Blue is now SOLD.

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Cotton Bags: Peacock, Comma

Two more butterfly bags. I'm going with real butterflies for now - there are some absolute stunners out there. And that's just the native UK species.

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Cotton Bags: Three Butterflies

In the order they were created, here are three butterfly-decorated cotton bags. There are no paintings to go with these; in fact, two of them are pretty much straight out of my head. I'm sure that you can tell which is the "real" butterfly, despite the fact that its forewings are, in fact, too short.

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