Snow Princess Birthday Card

Did you know that your sketch pens are compatible with alcohol-based markers?  With any of the major brands of alcohol markers that I tested, the regular sketch pen ink does not bleed when colored over and does not leave a residue on the nibs (I would be cautious when using the glitter or metallic sketch pens, however, as this may affect your marker nibs).  That means you can turn tons of images from the Silhouette Online Store into your own “digital stamps”.  This is a great thing for those who love to color digital images, but don’t have a printer that can handle heavyweight cardstock or that uses compatible ink.

• Using the “Cut by Line Color” command in the advanced settings of the Cut Settings window, you can quickly and easily set your Silhouette up to sketch out several designs first, followed by precise cutting around the edges.
• TIP: The settings in the software for “Coverstock” worked well for me when I was cutting the popular Neenah 110lb cardstock for my sketched digis.

• Many of the sketch designs in the Online Store (like the snow princess here) come with their own cut lines that you can use for cutting out the sketched image.
• If you choose to sketch a regular cut file (like the floral images above), you will just need to use the Offset command to add cut lines.  I used a one-eighth inch border on the flowers above, but you may prefer to make this smaller for your images.

• My niece is still very much obsessed with a certain Snow Princess movie, so for her birthday card, I sketched out this design in black and did some quick coloring with my alcohol-based markers.  She has sandy/dirty-blonde hair like her aunt (except hers is natural), so I thought she would like a princess that looked a little more like herself.
• I deleted the snowflakes from the original princess design because I would be adding some to my background separately.

• To create the glittery snowflake background, I first cut the snowflake spray from this designout of Silhouette Stencil Material.  You can see that my stencil looks well-loved in the first panel as I had been experimenting with different colored backgrounds before finally deciding on this one…good thing it’s reusable!
• Next, I mixed small scoops of silver and blue glitter into some translucent embossing paste and spread it over my stencil in a pretty thick layer.  The glitter makes the paste a little more difficult to spread, so be careful to work out any air bubbles before removing the stencil.
• Although a little difficult to see in the last panel, once dry this leaves a clear, icy-looking and sparkly snowflake spray.  I also inked the edges of my cardstock with a darker blue to create a little more depth in the panel.

• Here is a close-up of the colored digital die-cut image so that you can see that how nicely the sketch pen ink holds up to alcohol markers.
• Yeah, my glitter brush pen is almost out of ink and sputtered a few times over my image…frustrating when you spend the time to color, but I would bet a four-year-old is just going to be happy to see sparkly glitter!

• I added a few rhinestones to accent the snowflake spray, and mounted the whole panel over some silver glitter paper.
• The sentiment was sketched onto Silhouette Vellum using one of the sketch fonts from the Online Store (vellum may not be the ideal material for sketching onto, but I think it turned out nicely anyway).  Then, I strategically placed strong liquid adhesive under the rhinestone and her feet to keep the one end of the vellum banner attached to the card, while popping the other end up with some clear foam adhesive mounted under the sentiment.

I hope this project provides you with a few new ways to use some classic Silhouette products.  And looking past just the cards and scrapbook pages…how about sketching and coloring a framed piece for your wall?

Shapes Used:

• Snow Princess Sketch
• Banner Curvy
• Snowflake Spray Card

Fonts Used:

• LW Tall Sketch Font