Designer Day One ~ Birthday Princess Crown by Lauren Bergold

there are a great many benefits to being the aunt of three lovely and adorable nieces, but i have to confess that my favorite is having a really good excuse to make things like THIS:

yes, it's an official PRINCESS CROWN made entirely from the pixie dust anniversary kitBLUE MOON, which i had the honor of assembling with pixie-in-chief kirsty vittetoe! you may recall that i made a different crown in february with the MY FUNKY VALENTINEkit, for my niece riley. this edition will be given to her sister, lindsay marie.

one of my favorite ingredients in this kit is the vintage sheet music, something i use A LOT OF in my crafty life! i love the softly aged patina of it, and the way it adds a subtle festive feeling to any project. in this case i glued it to my crown's base, which is constructed from a double layer of 9x18" heavy duty cardstock cut into an appropriately fancy crown shape. to embellish the circumfrence i punched some long border strips from two of the gorgeous girls' paperie prints, AND the pretty pink packaging from the melody ross epoxy stickers! i overlapped these as carefully as possible and after using my xyron to adhere them, ran my sewing machine around a few times to make sure they'd be attached permanently!

you need a really good centerpiece to make a crown look seriously princessy, in my opinion! this one is made of fussy-cut doilies from pink paislee "dew drops" paper, a 2' circle punched from the packaging of the kit's prima gem flourish, and surmounted by a a sweet butterfly. i've embellished the area around this icon with the carefully cut-apart-and-reassembled gem flourish. i have to confess that this is the one place i CHEATED on this project: i added in bits of a second, similar flourish from my own stash. and really, one flourish was enough... i just couldn't resist going a little bit crazy!

i repeated the circle + butterfly + gem motif in a scaled-down version on each side of the crown. i inked the edges of each element with a subtly aging shade of distress ink to tie all of the colors and patterns together, and used layers of foam tape to give each element dimension.

to fasten the crown into a circular shape, i punched five holes on each end, set them with eyelets from my own stash, and threaded them in the manner of a corset, with pale tan seambinding that i tied into a double bow. along the bottom edges, for a final glamorous touch, i added a frothy layer of creamy tulle, that i gathered and sewed for maximum impact.

on the inside of the crown i stamped a random flourish pattern in a soft brown ink, just to alleviate the stark white of the cardstock. and thus my "birthday crown" is ready to bestow upon the beautiful princess lindsay! ♥

Kirsty's Note -

Oh my, Princess Lindsay Marie is going to be so happy with a princess crown crafted specially just for her, what a beauty!!! Thanks Pixie Lauren, not just for this lovely piece of work but also putting together this fabulous "BLUE MOON" kit together!

At The Pixie Shop

Pixie October Kit "Blue Moon" will be on sale at The Pixie Shop on October  5th, look out for this fun and fabulous kit!

We are celebrating our 1st birthday with lots of specials this month, do look out for *Anniversary Alert* at the Pixie Blog, you might pick up some really GREAT DEAL!!!!

Pixie September Challenge

You still have time to link up with our September Challenge (ends Oct 5)

Here's the sketch

Click HERE for details or to link your entry

Pixie October GIVEAWAY

Do you want to be the proud owner of this?

Pixie November Kit "SNOW SHOW" could be yours, click HERE to enter the GIVEAWAY!