Thinking of You Card

Well, my first personal challenge is complete! The paper that I used from my new collection is called "Graceful Circles" and is made by My Mind's Eye. I loved the colors of the paper and when I first saw it my first thought was "thinking of you," so I decided to stick with that idea. Here are a few pictures of the card:

The green looks a lot brighter in the pictures than it really it, it's actually more subdued. I am still working on my stamp collection, so I had to type the text instead of stamping it. :( 

This is the inside of the card. I'm having a lot of trouble finding a good spot for lighting when I take these pictures, so I apologize for the shadows and for the low quality of the rest of my pictures. It's all a learning experience! This is the same pink that is on the front of the card, it just looks a lot darker here. The inside of the card reads: "When we're together or when we're apart, you're first in my thoughts and first in my heart." I'll admit I didn't come up with that myself, I found it on a great quote website that offers sayings for cards.

This side view shows the colors of the inside much better.

And that's it! All I really used was the "Graceful Circles" paper, different colors of cardstock, a paper trimmer, an Elmer's glue pen, decorative scissors, my computer to type the sayings, and blue confetti for the inside circles. It was really simple to make, but is definitely unique, which is what I was going for. :)

I hope to have another card made within the next few days, thanks for all of your support, it is greatly appreciated! :)

Ashley

Personal Paper Challenge

Hope you all are having a great Monday! My schedule this week is super crazy, so please bear with me as there might be a few days between posts. I mentioned in my last post that I would be doing a personal "random paper challenge," and in the previous post before that I mentioned the lack of patterned paper in my collection. To solve that problem, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a 50 sheet paper pack that has completely random 12 in x 12 in scrapbook paper. Every sheet is different and I noticed that some of them are even made by different companies.


I have decided to personally challenge myself and create as many cards as I can that use at least one of the sheets that came in this pack. This way I get my money's worth and also can be really creative, although it could be frustrating at times. I am not giving myself a time limit for this, as I'm sure I will make other cards and crafts in between.


I will start working on my first card as soon as I am done posting this, and hope to have it up within the next couple of days. Wish me luck! :)


Ashley

One Week Blogaversary!

Good morning everyone, hope you all  had a wonderful week and are enjoying your weekend! I would just like to say thanks again for supporting my blog and leaving such sweet, inspiring comments. I love seeing all of your comments and viewing your blogs to see your creations! :)

In honor of my new blog being one week old, I decided to make a birthday card using some cute birthday-themed paper that I absolutely love. The card is for no one in particular, I was just in a crafty mood. :) Here are some pictures of the card:

The pictures kind of look fuzzy but I think that's because the paper is glittered, which you can kind of see in the pictures. All of the paper minus the white cardstock came from The Paper Studio's 4.5" by 6.5" Birthday Extravaganza Paper. Although I wish the paper was a little bit bigger since I LOVE all of the designs, it works well for smaller cards like this, which is 4" by 5" I believe. I then stamped the letters using mini alphabet stamps that I have. While they were only $1 at Michael's (along with the ink pad) they are extremely hard to align, which is why they appear sort of crooked. I tried! Unfortunately the only color ink pads I have are black, white and yellow, so black was the only option as the white and yellow wouldn't of been visible. I plan on getting many more colors and stamps very soon!

Thank you to all of my followers who have supported me this week and given me encouragement and inspiration! I am so glad my blog has been successful thus far. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Stay tuned for my personal "Random Paper Card Challenge." :)

Ashley

Summer Bookmarks!

Hello, hope you all are had a wonderful day! It rained most of the day here, but for me, that's a perfect reason to stay inside and craft. :) I didn't have enough time to make anything extensive today, so instead I made some simple bookmarks using summer-themed paper that has been collecting dust in my craft drawer. I figured it was the perfect time to use it. I also cleaned out and re-organized my craft drawers today, and in the process of doing so I realized I have almost NO patterned paper left, but hundreds of sheets of solid colors! :( I plan on heading straight to Hobby Lobby next week right after I cash my paycheck! :) Anyways, here's the bookmarks I made today; simple and perfect for summer reading. I cut 1.5 in. x 6.5 in. strips of the summer paper and layered them on solid colored cardstock and trimmed the edges using decorative scissors to give them some flair, and then added the chipboard letters. 

Thanks for stopping by!
Ashley

Film Reel Birthday Card

Hi everyone, hope you had a great start to your week! :) Thank you so much to anyone who has started to follow my blog or has left a comment, you have no idea how appreciative I am! I am going to try and post every day, but sometimes my schedule gets a little crazy (such as yesterday, hence the reason I didn't post) and time gets away from me. I'm sure you all have those days, too! :)


I spent this afternoon creating a birthday card for a friend of mine. He turned 19 and absolutely loves movies, and is also a film major studying producing and cinematography. In honor of his lifelong interests, I made him a film-based birthday card! The entire card is handmade, and I actually used pretty basic supplies, nothing too fancy. Here are a few pictures:

Side view of the front of the card.

Front view of the card.

        

Inside of the card.

The inside of the card was supposed to be the actual film, but there wasn't enough room to make it look realistic enough, but I think you can tell what it's supposed to be. Those are black chipboard letters on the white squares. I wasn't pleased with having to make the "happy" the way it is, but I didn't have much of choice given the small amount of space and size of the letters. The card itself is 5.5 in x 5.5 in. 

I used blue, lime green, purple, white and black cardstock, along with the black chipboard letters and lime green confetti for the polka dots on the front. I used an Elmer's craft glue pen to glue everything (which worked wonderfully) and cut everything with an ordinary pair of scissors. Here's the process of creating the film reel:

I traced a 5 inch circle onto green cardstock and then took a button pin and traced five circles onto the cardstock. The smaller circles were traced with pencil which is why the lines are so faint.

I then used a hole punch to create enough room for my scissors so that I could cut out the small circles on the inside.

Here's the finished reel. I then traced a smaller circle onto black cardstock (which you can see in the pictures on the front of the card at the beginning of this post) and glued it to the back of the reel. It was so difficult finding the right size circles to trace!

And that's it! I was having a hard time contemplating what I wanted to do for his card, and this morning I finally came up with the idea. I tried it out and ended up really liking it. 

Thanks for stopping by, have a great rest of the week!

Ashley

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day, everyone! I finished up my Father's Day card last night, so today I'm going to post pictures of the process of making it. Now, please keep in mind that I don't own a Cricut machine, so everything on my cards is either handmade or embellishments that I've purchased (such as the chipboards). I've also been exhausted after starting classes this week and working two full days in a row, so this card isn't my best work, but I feel it should be posted anyway, despite the fact that I'm not really happy with it. But hey, I have to start somewhere, and I'm hoping that this blog will help me improve my card making skills. With that said...

This is the final picture of the card. My dad is really into patriotism, so I decided to make a patriotic card for him. The stars didn't work out as well as I hoped they would (I wanted them to have more of a sponge effect), but oh well.

Here are the materials that I used to make this card:

Sorry about the bad lighting and ugly-looking carpet (it really doesn't look that bad, I promise) but this was the best I could do for only having one night to complete the card. I used:

-Patriotic Collage paper made by The Paper Studio

-Vintage Flags paper made by The Paper Studio

-Red D A D chipboard embellishments

-Regular scissors and zig zag scissors (the border of the card is zig zagged, it's hard to see)

-Elmer's spray adhesive and Elmer's Craft Bond Memory Glue Pen

-White Anita's All-Purpose Acrylic Paint and homemade star sponge

-Sharpie, tacks, exacto knife, and paper trimmer

To make the stars, I created my own star sponge stamp. To do this, I made a star template in a word processor, tacked it to a sponge, traced it, and then cut it with an exacto knife. Here's the more detailed process:

Not perfect, but it worked.

Yes, this is a Thanksgiving-themed paper plate.

And that's basically it! It took about two hours total, with having to wait for the paint and glue to completely dry. That's probably WAY longer than it should have taken, but hey, I'm just a beginner. :) I realize now that another goal of starting this blog was to show that awesome cards can be made by anyone, even on a low budget and with a small amount of materials. Part of the fun for me is figuring out   how to make my cards more creative with only a small collection of supplies, such as creating the sponge stamp. 

I hope you enjoyed my first "real" blog post, and thanks for stopping by. Many more to come! :)

Ashley

Chipboard Bundle Purchase

I made a Hobby Lobby run after work today in search for materials to make a Father's Day card (I admit, I did procrastinate) and ended up purchasing this awesome chipboard bundle along with some patterned paper to use for the card (I'll post pictures later once it's finished).

I don't have much experience with chipboards, but they're something I've wanted to work with for a while, and when I saw this HUGE bundle for only $9.99, I couldn't pass it up and figured I could somehow incorporate them into my Father's Day card (or at least that's how I justified the purchase :)

Here's a picture of the bundle (made by The Paper Studio) before I opened it:

The details are extremely hard to read because I don't have a good camera and the lighting in my room isn't all that great either (I'm working on it!) but basically what's included are 10 sheets of uppercase alphas, 10 sheets of lowercase alphas, (both uppercase and lowercase came in red, pink, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown and black) 1 sheet of numbers in black, 1 sheet of symbols in black, 2 sheets of icons and 2 sheets of words. The symbols and icons are pictured below.

In both pictures the sheet on the right is identical to the sheet on the left, just in a paler shade. It came that way, it's not my crappy lighting :) Anyways, I felt this was a great deal and I'm excited to add it to my collection. I love purchases that I know will last me a while and have aspects (such as many colors) that can be used for cards of any occasion.

Do you like using chipboards? Feel free to post links to any of your creations that include them, I would love to be inspired!

Ashley

Welcome!

Hey everyone, welcome to my blog, Made Especially For You! My name is Ashley, and I'm currently a college student residing in Sycamore, Illinois. I've always enjoyed making cards and other crafts, no matter the occasion. After starting my part-time job last summer, I was finally able to start financially supporting my hobby. The purpose behind this blog is to share with you my creations, crafting tips, and product reviews. Feedback is always greatly appreciated, I'm super excited to hear your comments/opinions and also learn from your crafting experiences as well. :)


I'm going to try my best to post something each day, but with classes and work sometimes my schedule gets a little hectic. Please bear with me as I'm off to a slow start, I promise it will get better! :)


~Ashley