A Fairy Special Birthday Card

My friend Rebecca’s daughter Abbie just turned three on Groundhog’s Day and celebrated the occasion with a fun birthday party. She was REALLY into playing with all her presents this year and enjoyed everything about her birthday cake, from the adorable Daniel Tiger design her Grammy made to the ice cream accompanying it, and us singing Happy Birthday to her. Unfortunately her birthday fell on a bright, cold day, so she saw her shadow and we’re in for six more weeks of winter! Abbie is the cutest little fairy princess so I wanted to make a card befitting her. I used the Fairy Happy stamp set by My Favorite Things. My friend Wendie made me the most adorable friendship card last year with this same stamp set. She used a no-line watercolor technique she’s mastered to create a beautiful and heartfelt work of art I will treasure forever. You can see the card she made me and read more about how she created it on her blog.

For Abbie’s card, I stamped the fairy and flower images on Copic marker paper using black hybrid ink, then I colored in the images using Copic markers. The black hybrid ink pad by My Favorite Things is the best black ink I have found, producing crisp images that dry quickly. It’s my go-to ink pad of choice. Copic marker paper is extra smooth, making it ideal for blending Copic marker colors. I like to use either the Copic colorless blender or the lighter shade of whatever color I’m working with for blending my colors. If you’re not familiar with Copic markers, they’re refillable sketch markers containing alcohol based ink used by illustrators and card makers alike. Although you can buy sets, they’re more commonly sold individually and are available in 358 colors. My friend Wendie has a really extensive collection of them. I have lots of brown Copics but I need to add several other colors to my collection still, and more grey markers since I find myself using shades of grey the most. Here I used several colors (I started to list them all and then realized I probably combined close to twenty colors) and you can see some of the blending I did on the leaves on the dresses, the dresses themselves, and the fairies’ hair. I colored the wings light grey so they would pick up the shimmer of the Zig Wink of Stella Brush Glitter Marker better, which I layered over the grey wings. After coloring the pink and purple dresses and matching hair bow and headband with Copic markers, I colored over them too, this time using Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust pens in purple and pink, to add sparkle. It’s hard to see in the photo and looks better in person, but if you look closely at the second and third photo below, you can see the shimmer on the wings and dresses.

After I finished my coloring, I die-cut the pieces out with my Evolution Advanced die cutting machine and the matching dies for the stamp set. I also cut some clouds out of plain white cardstock. These clouds were a free gift with purchase set from My Favorite Things.

Next I sponged the background of a plain white A2 card with sky blue ink and the Ranger ink blending tool. I used blue watercolor paint to spatter the background by flicking a paintbrush. I stamped the Have a Fairy Happy Birthday greeting and adhered the clouds and flowers to the card front, then added the fairies using foam mounting tape to give the card some dimension. Initially I had planned on adding some sparkly sequins to the background of the card too, but I felt like the card was complete once I added the fairies and flowers, and to add the sequins would be too much embellishment crammed in to too little space.

I think this is my favorite birthday card I’ve made Abbie so far. Here is a look at the cards I made for her last two birthdays.

And here is the adorable birthday girl herself, through the years!