Holly Time Fairy

Hello!  It’s the first of the month and that means it’s time for another challenge over at Craft-Dee BowZ!  The challenge is always “Anything Goes and Include a Handmade Bow.”  Our sponsor this month is A Day for Daisies.  A Day For Daisies provides themed categories of over 3000 digital illustrations and a fast growing line of new clear polymer stamp sets, including fairy tales and magical mermaids, cutie kids, vintage illustrations, sentiments and lovely designs for all occasions!  They are offering a prize to the winner of this month’s challenge – head over to Craft-Dee BowZ for more details and for some amazing inspiration from the rest of the team.

It was a tough choice with so many awesome images, but I finally decided on  “Holly Time Fairy“.  I just love this image and had fun creating my card:

I wanted to print the image on watercolor paper, but my paper’s too thick to run through the printer.  Any suggestions out there for a decent watercolor paper thin enough to go through a printer?  Originally, I wanted my girl to have black hair and a black dress, but I came across the gray patterned paper and went with that.  I printed my image directly onto it, then foiled it with black Deco Foil.  I hope you can see the gloss of the foil in my pic below.  I also printed and foiled a few extras on white cardstock for the hair and skin.

For her face, I used Prima Watercolor pencils (for skin and hair) on the white cardstock then cut and adhered to the image.  The reason I didn’t cut the face and hair together is I did more than one version of each, and the face and hair I ended up using were not on the same piece of cardstock (of course they weren’t!).  I started coloring the hair with a black Prismacolor pencil and blending with Gamsol, wasn’t happy, so I switched to my distress inks and used watered-down Black Soot to build up the layers, then I added just a tiny amount of watered-down white acrylic paint and swirled that around trying to make her hair look curly since that’s the kind of hair she has.   I cut that out and adhered over her face – if you look closely, you can see the added layer and it almost looks like she’s wearing a wig.  I painted the holly and berries with Perfect Pearls Festival Green and Merriment Red, then added Christmas Red Stickles to the berries and the buttons on the dress.

I shaded the dress and wings with watered-down Black Soot, then cut out the 3 “rings” (for lack of a better word) from one of the extra sets I printed, and added White Sparkly Fluff (by Our Craft Lounge).  It’s like flocking, but with sparkle.  I adhered about 3 layers to get the thickness I wanted.  I love the look and how soft it is, but it can be a bit messy.

 

I really wanted to cut out my image with an oval die, but I don’t have one large enough,  so I cut around it and then rounded the corners.  I matted it with white and black cardstock and adhered to my card base with foam squares (my background papers were from my pile of scraps).  I used a Martha Stewart punch for the snowflakes in the red/white paper and then cut out red suede snowflakes from a scrap I had and inset them into the cut-out snowflakes and added a few to the green paper and to my bow.  I added just a tiny bit of the red Stickles to each snowflake, just enough for a little glint of sparkle here and there.  I had a pack of Kaisercraft wooden holly flourishes and painted one with white acrylic paint.  When dried, I lighted “painted” on Silver Stickles because I didn’t want full coverage.

I made a beautiful triple-loop bow with my Craft-Dee BowZ tool – it was so easy!  I love that green, sheer ribbon that Donna gave the team as part of our kits, such a pretty color. 

I had forgotten all about my sentiment until I was done!  I stamped and cut out a few of the greeting I used above, but it just didn’t fit anywhere.  I added it next to the fairy (used black archival ink and then clear embossing powder) – thank goodness for my MISTI stamping tool or it would have been a disaster!

I think that about sums it up.  Thanks for stopping by and feel free to ask questions or leave comments.  Have a great day!

Playing along in the following challenges:

http://christmascardchallenges.blogspot.com/2017/01/challenge-5.html

http://craftyhazelnutschristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/2017/01/chnc-challenge-318.html

http://www.hidinginmycraftroom.com/2017/01/himcr-286-any-holiday.html

http://abitmoretimetocraft.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/a-bit-more-time-to-craft-challenge-37.html

http://christmasatsweetstampinchallengeblog.blogspot.co.uk/

http://abcchristmaschallenge.blogspot.com/2017/02/c-d-for.html

http://christmascardsallyearround.blogspot.com/2017/02/february-challenge-add-red-andor-pink.html

http://craftyhazelnutschristmaschallenge2.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/chnc-challenge-extra-for-february-2017.html

http://adayfordaisies.blogspot.com/2017/02/adfd-february-showcase-and-challenge-159.html