This is one of the first butterfly pendants I made, a yellow swallowtail wing. It sold right away at my first art sale.

Some pieces in progress and wrapped in copper foil.

Here is one of my boxes of wings. I get them from friends and buy them on the internet from suppliers that are environmentally conscious.

This is a statement from a site I get some of my butterflies from, Butterfly Utopia. http://www.butterflyutopia.com 

 How does collecting butterflies save the rainforest? Am I endangering butterflies by collecting them?

All of our butterflies have been inspected and cleared by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service upon being imported into the U.S. There are framed butterfly sellers who illegally import and export specimens that haven't been cleared with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, don't buy from them!  U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is a completely separate entity from "customs" and they require that ALL organisms, dead or alive, be cleared before entering or leaving the U.S. Click here for more info on permits and such.

Our butterflies come from butterfly farms & ranching projects from all over the world (mainly South America, Africa and South East Asia). These farms provide the natives of the countries with an excellent source of income and prevent them from destroying the rainforest to clear land for cattle raising, logging etc. Eggs laid on leaves in the wild rainforests are collected and hatched in the farms. In the wild, only a very small percentage (about 5%) of butterfly eggs survive to adulthood. Butterfly farms have much higher survival rates, approximately 80%. Habitat protection is also important because butterfly caterpillars will only eat certain plants from their habitat, so these plants are also collected. Most of the less colorful female butterflies hatched on farms are released into the wild to lay more eggs in a rainforest that would have been destroyed years ago if not for the protection of the farms. So collecting butterflies actually saves butterflies & the rainforest! For example, the island of Madagascar (off the coast of Africa) is a unique home to many magnificent species including the huge Comet moth and popular Sunset Moth. Butterfly exporting is a valuable commodity to Madagascar. Without that income, butterfly habitats could possibly be forever destroyed to make room for cattle raising, buildings etc. If you wipe out that habitat hundreds of butterfly species will become extinct overnight. So the more Madagascar native butterflies purchased, the more valuable their habitat becomes.

None of our butterflies are endangered or illegal to own. Butterflies can be "rare" to collectors but not endangered. Some tropical butterflies only come from one small area and can only be obtained from a single butterfly farm, while others are available from numerous farms. Unless noted otherwise, all of the butterflies on our site are males. Here's a direct quote from an email we recently received: "I work for a small NGO in Ecuador, Fundacion NYTUA. We are currently investigating the possibility of beginning small butterfly ranching operations in some of the local villages as an alternative source of income, hopefully preventing the current reliance on income from felling areas of forest."

The First Sighting

The Mourning Cloak

  Adding to the selection of Gnome Buddies. It is so fun to see their fun personalities emerge!

Right now I am busy in my studio preparing for the next Hallmarket! It is next month on September 28th from 10am - 5pm on the Square in front of Kaleidoscope and the Hallmark Visitors Center.