A colourful collage of painted butterflies has been created at Reepham Primary School as part of a project combining conservation with art.

The students each made one of the 207 wood-veneer butterflies which were decorated with glitter and paint before being mounted on display in the school's reception.

Norfolk artist Obie Butcher ran the environmental education project as part of the school's Eco Week, where the children were also taught about threatened species and how they could encourage them into their gardens.

'I think art and conservation can benefit each other enormously,' said Mr Butcher. 'Children are naturally creative so you can introduce conservation ideas to them and then engage them with a big art project that ties into what they were learning about.

'In this particular project, it was more about the art. Sometimes it was quite hard to talk to them about butterflies, because they got so immersed in making them.

'It was absolutely fantastic. We had 207 of them, as each child decorated their own butterfly.

'All environmental education has a strong artistic theme, and it really works. As an artist myself I have always been interested in nature so it is great to be able to combine both fields.'