Blonde or Brunette Pixie Holly – Your Choice!

by verybellemakes

Today I have two fairly identical cards to show you. A very good friend asked me to make Christmas cards for her daughter and niece, based around this card.

The girls are the same age, all but a day, but one is very blonde, while the other is much darker haired. So I decided to incorporate this into the cards, to personalise Pixie Holly a little more.

Pixie Holly was a freebie from Pollycraft earlier in the year before the shop closed. I have made several cards with her this year, she’s a pleasure to work with! As usual I coloured with Pro-Markers, adding some Stickles o the wings for a little magical sparkle. The spotty and striped background papers were from Digital Bake Shop on Etsy, and were a sale bargain! I cut the sentiment using some glittercard and my Silhouette, welding an offset version of the sentiment to a rectangle to create the red background. I matted the image onto a little green glittercard too. The little holly leaves have been abandoned in stash for ages, no idea where they popped up from!! Glad they’ve been put to good use now though 🙂

I based the cards around Sketch #225 from Saturday Sketch, in the current challenge, you can pick from a back catalogue of sketches – there really is one to suit every card!!

Thanks for reading x

9Sep2013

Pixie Fairy And A Sketch Challenge

by verybellemakes

Today, I added to my growing collection of Christmas cards, and combined Christmas with the current sketch challenge on Little Miss Muffet’s blog.

I have to admit it, I have a real soft-spot for this little Pixie Fairy, which I found as a free download on Pollycrafts! I love colouring her hair, creating waves and curls with a combination of markers 🙂 Anyway, today, I kept to traditional Christmas colours and tried using an almond Pro-Marker for the wings, with a smidgen of Crystal Stickles over the top…and I have to say, I am really chuffed with the results!! The wings have a little shimmery sparkle to them, which seems both more festive and magical…. (I think I’m getting a bit carried away now!)

After colouring the image, I mounted it on some dark green card, then popped the two layered circles beneath it. The papers I used for the circles are from the Forever Friends’ “Santa’s On His Way” papers. A little red ric-rac and the sentiment (which came with Pixie Holly) and the card was complete!

Thanks for reading x

Challenges:

Little Miss Muffet – Challenge 68: Sketch

One Stitch At A Time – Use A Digi

6Sep2013

Pixie Holly

by verybellemakes

Yesterday, by chance, I found a lovely site for digis….and to my delight I found a little freebie Pixie Holly too!! Pixie Holly is available as a free download from Pollycraft Designs until 11th September and all it takes is a few moments to register for an account. Why not pop over and take a peek…?

As you may already know, I also received my order of Pro-Markers earlier this week, and I have already lost several hours shading, blending and colouring! And today was no different! Here’s what I came up with….

The frame around Pixie Holly is one of the freebie templates included with the software for the Cameo Portrait – I liked the way it echoes the holly leaves in Pixie Holly’s hair, and cut it from a shimmery dusky pink cardstock to tie it back to the colouring of the dress and stripy tights.

I also tried adding a line of pale grey around the coloured image to develop some depth, and I was pleased with the overall results! I used the cool grey 1 Pro-Marker, but I think I might give a pale blue a go next time as I’ve seen some great results on fellow crafters’ blogs!

The sentiment came with the image from Pollycraft Designs – I loved the font and style! After printing and cutting the sentiment out, I rubbed the side of the chisel tip rose pink of my rose pink Pro-Marker against the edge of the card until the colour bled in enough to make a fine line around the outer edge, then I added a little clear embossing powder to give it a shine and mounted it on a second shaped card layer.

Finally, I made a small rosette from some spotty ribbon and popped a little wooden heart on the centre.

I had finished card and was casting a critical eye over it, when my daughter appeared. She is just turned four and very inquisitive! She sat next to me, told me the card was her “favourite and bestest” and then asked me why the pixie wasn’t smiling! I tried to explain that it was the style of the image, but she wouldn’t have it, so she ran off with one of my early practice sheets and drew a friend for Pixie Holly…Thanks for reading x