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Favourite Apple Metal Pin

Theme

Butterflies are in my thoughts because thousands of Caper White butterflies have recently flown to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast from western Queensland in search of food. I have never before seen so many butterflies in our garden.

Although it is lovely to have the Caper White butterflies, I want a more colourful butterfly for my pin. I chose the Monarch because it is the most beautiful butterfly I have seen at intervals all my life.

Rough Sketches

I drew only half the butterfly because I will mirror my vector drawing. I want the shape of the wings to be closer to the second sketch.

Vector Drawing

I want my buttterfly pin to be fairly realistic, but also successful graphically at a small scale, approximately 50% of life size. Monarch butterflies have a double row of small white spots on the outer edge of both wings. This would not work on a small pin, so I made a single row of larger white markings.

My butterfly pin has a wingspan of 50 millimetres, just under two inches. I tried a few different colour combinations.

Differences are subtle, but I prefer the last colour combination.

Probably it would not be possible to have such delicate antennae for an enamel pin. The technical possibilities would have to be investigated. However, I think they are fine for this design project.

I am wondering what metal is used for the Apple Metal pins. In my favourite above and some other pictures the metal looks grey, but it looks black for Jon's pins. Is there a choice of metal? Obviously black would be important for a Monarch pin.