Ruth | Butterfly Moth Collection
Ruth is a butterfly moth who lives in a well-worn vintage toolbox that once housed socket wrenches. She boldly shows her colors and her sparkly, larger-than-life personality.
She is an original mixed-media collage set into a ready-to-hang, weathered, vintage toolbox. She is created from tiny scraps of recycled gardening and design magazines, arranged layer by layer to form rich texture and subtle color shifts. Accented with delicate hand stitching, she carries depth you can feel and details that reward a closer look.
Artwork Details
• Size: 11 x 11 x .5 inches
• Ready to Hang Toolbox (with chain) or stand on a shelf or mantle
• Mixed media: recycled magazine pages and thread, vintage toolbox
• Varnished for UV protection and longevity
• Signed on both front and back
About the Collection
My Butterfly Moth Collection is inspired by the landscape around our 80 acres in Northern Michigan—milkweed fields full of monarchs, quiet woods, and small discoveries that invite me to slow down and really see.
But my connection to butterflies goes deeper than place. They were a constant in my childhood, stitched into the needlepoint pillows my mother made and woven into my earliest memories of color and detail. Over time, they also became a symbol of my own transformation and reinvention. These pieces echo that journey, turning tiny fragments and overlooked bits into something layered, alive, and wholly new.
Why Collect the Original?
Only one exists. Collecting the original connects you directly to the creative process, the hands that made it, and the story behind it.
Collectors often say the same thing: it’s the texture and unexpected details that stops them.
Ruth and the toolbox she is set into are uniquely tactile—every layered scrap, every thread, every tiny surface variation that creates depth and movement. It’s the difference between seeing a photograph of something and standing right in front of it—present, dimensional, alive.
