valentine princess crown by lauren bergold

my eldest niece, riley elizabeth, was born on valentine's day. of course i have no proof that this is what made her an especially sweet and loving young lady, but it couldn't have hurt, surely?! that's one of the reasons i was so excited when pixie-in-chief kirsty vittetoe invited me to put together the january pixie dust paperie kit: i knew immediately that i'd call it MY FUNKY VALENTINE and that i'd fill it fun and fancy products suitable for young princesses' birthdays! obviously the best gift ever would be a glamorous princess crown, so that's what i made first:


i've always wanted to make a crown, but i wasn't quite sure how to get started. a few months ago, i saw this one that heidi swapp made, and suddenly i thought "aha!" in the end, my project looks *nothing* like heidi's...but it was just the kick i needed to get going!


i xyroned several pieces of sturdy 12x18" white cardstock together to form a super-strong base, and covered the front with one of my favorite items from the kit--the gorgeous vintage sheet music. i used a clipart fleur-de-lis and some chipboard flourishes as trace-around templates to design the swirly pediments. when i had an appropriately fancy profile pencilled onto my cardstock i carefully cut it out using scissors and a craft knife.

then it was time for the FUN PART: i stamped and overstamped all around the edges of the crown before starting in on the embellishments. the diecut doilies in the kit made the perfect medallions on which to place distressed multi-layered patterned paper flowers surmounted with those beautiful dear lizzy rose brads.

i used a few border punches to dress up strips of the kit's patterned papers...and even a bit of plain white copier paper! i layered the strips together, and then added a fancy glimmer-misted crepe paper ruffle. for maximum dramatic effect, at the very bottom edge, i used my sewing machine to carefully attach the gorgeous dear lizzy rose ribbon trim.

up until this point, i'd been working fairly flat: my decorated and fancily cut "crown" was still basically one long strip ...but now it was time to go 3-D! i gently and gradually bent the crown into shape a bit at a time. when i had achieved the appropriate roundness, all that remained was to secure it. i punched holes with my crop-o-dile and reinforced them with one of the very few things i used that wasn't in the kit...some elderly metal eyelets. i laced the pixie dust paperie signature seam binding through the holes as you would on a shoe...a very fancy pink shoe, belonging to a glamorous princess, obviously!

it was at this point i realized that the *BACK* of the crown... (up until now plain white cardstock) ...was 100% visible from every angle; so i flattened it back out and added some pretty pink stamped flourishes and a couple of diecut hearts to disguise functional things like foam tape and the backs of brads!

once i'd thought of hearts, of course, i realized that a valentine birthday princess's crown cannot be called complete without them, so i put a few more on the front. as for the butterfly garland...well, there's no logic to that at all...i just really really like butterfly garlands! :)

finally my crown was complete, but for the absence of a princess to wear it...do you think riley will mind if i give it to her a bit early? i'm not sure i can wait until FEBRUARY!!! ♥♥♥

Kirsty's Note -

This is definitely the prettiest princess crown ever..... 

Thanks Lauren!

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