Butterfly Madness...enabled by Martha Stewart and an excess of free time

Two friends of mine have shown me an undeserved and illogical amount of generosity over the last three years, and I wanted to create something to show them my gratitude.

I recently went through a phase of exploring uses for paper butterflies in interior decorating, and landed on a piece of wall art that utilized their delicate, 3D forms to create a larger story.

This piece is about how what they gave on my behalf was instrumental in my own personal growth and recovery from deep anxiety and depression--in a way, the "life they laid down" led to an abundance of life within me.
Hopefully the shape evoked by this crowd of butterflies, as well as the gradient of saturation and their crescendo of elevation from the canvas can communicate something to that effect.

If not, who doesn't love butterflies?
Done in oranges to complement their light blue living room wall.

The first butterflies are directly on the canvas, but then they start poking out on wires as they fly farther. Like an idiot, I thought I was going to individually cut each one. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Then I found out Martha Stewart (my spirit animal) makes a nice butterfly paper punch. Which saved my life.

The wires were punched through the canvas and hot-glued to the back, which was REALLY time-consuming. Sooo instead of glueing each butterfly onto the free end, I resorted to tape. Good 'ol Scotch tape. Which worked just fine--they're so light it was more than enough adhesive. And it took MUCH less time...

Due to the nature of the piece, in the stage before adding the butterflies, things began to get quite...hairy. This thing below was sitting in our room for about a week looking like it really needed a shave. Ew.