Pressed butterfly & flowers

Fall is arriving.

I love picking some dead flowers in the park with this softly breeze and warm sunshine.

However, may be there were some body before me or may be the keeper were very hard working that they keep the park so clean, I hardly found any dead flowers on the grass. When I kept searching if there were any dead flowers they were missed, I saw a beautiful butterfly lay on the ground, I did not make any insect specimen before and I did not have any interest to do so, for insect is just insect, I feel a bit scare about them. So I turned around and walked away… just 2 steps, suddenly a feeling come across… why not? It is not a chance that you can ask for! Why not to take this chance to know more about something that you do not know? It is a butterfly! A real butterfly, not a printing on bags or clothes, a real butterfly! People loves butterflies – when the butterflies are printing patterns, nobody want to know more about them for they are just something good looking on bags or clothes. It is not a real living things, it just a printing, a pattern for most people in Hong Kong, we just love its beauty on their wings. We do not care how they live, what they eat or how they were found dead.

I walk closer to the butterfly; observe it for a minute, to make sure that it is really a dead butterfly. For confirmation, I use a bird feather that I pick from the street to wave on the butterfly, then I found there were some ants passing through the butterfly, so I am sure that the butterfly is dead, than I use a little receipt paper that I found on my purse to pick it up and put it into my flower picking plastic box.

Holding the butterfly with me, I felt extremely excited! And a little bit worried what to do if it is not dead so I kept my eyes on it, if it moves, my blood run through my head and went down to my feet, excited but a lot of pressure.

Finally I got home, search tutorial about how to preserve butterflies. And I need to thanks there is internet and youtube, if not, I could not have the chance to know how to preserve butterflies in 10 minutes.

Okay, now I know how to preserve butterflies, but I do not have equipment and tools to do so, so I try to make them myself. I have many magazine at home, some of them are thick enough for me to pin the butterfly on it, you can see how the butterfly being now in the picture. I do not know how long it will dry, today is the 3^rd day that I preserve it, I think maybe I will wait for 5 days or a week, then I will remove it from the magazines and pin it on a new home that I prepared for it. It is an upcycle box with vintage papers that I am making decoupage on it.

Can’t wait for it! It will be a great great decoration on my wall!

And this is the flowers I pick from streets.