Monday, December 31, 2012

My Favorite Creations of 2012

As the year comes to an end I thought I'd take some time and look back on the projects I've made this year and choose my favorites. As a fairly new paper crafter it's so interesting to look back and see how your style and creativity have grown. A year ago at this time I had only just received my Cricut and was learning the many wonderful things it can do, and now I use it on almost on all of my projects and it has helped my creativity reach a whole new level. 

(Warning: This post is slightly picture-heavy).

Without further ado, here are my top favorite projects of 2012:

This card was made back in February for a challenge at The Perfect Sentiment. The challenge was to make a 'missing you' card with buttons. I had just purchased the All Dressed Up paper stack by DCWV and couldn't wait to use it... this paper collection is still one of my favorites! 
Original post can be found here.

This Easter card was made in March for a three button challenge. It was my first time using a banner on a card and I love the way it turned out, especially with the pretty pastel color scheme. The bunny was cut from the 3 Birds on Parade cartridge.
Original post can be found here.

This card was created in May and I had just started using digital stamps. I don't color too often, but I really got into it after trying the first time and went out and bought a decent-sized back of Prismacolor pencils to get me started. Once I can afford Copics I think I'll start coloring more often again. :)
Original post can be found here.

I used a Bugaboo digi to make this graduation card in June. I just really love the way it turned out as far as the layout and the coloring. I remember being completely unsure of how I was going to make this card and then somehow it all came together. Funny how those types of cards can end up being one of your favorites!
Original post can be found here.

I am absolutely terrible at typing bows, so the fact that there is an actual, decent-looking bow on this card makes it one of my favorites. I also love the color combo, the fun papers, and the cute birthday birdie. 
Original post can be found here.

This was made for a Christmas in July challenge. It was so simple to make yet I love it. The Christmas tree is cut from the Stretch Your Imagination cartridge and instead of cutting the layers for the tree from the cartridge I hole punched ornaments from the background paper and added some gold glitter to the star on top of the tree and ribbon for garland. Love it!
Original post can be found here.

Okay, this is just too cute to NOT be a favorite. The crafting nut and the sentiment are from Bugaboo, the card was made for a challenge at V's Sweet Ideas when I was on their design team. I love the little banner and instead of using a border cut using my Cricut I used crafting scissors which aren't a tool I use often on cards since I can't cut in a straight line. :)
Original post can be found here.

Masculine cards are usually a challenge for me, but this one came pretty easy. I made the sentiment myself and cut a film strip from the Artiste cartridge. The papers are DCWV and I used layers of cardstock hearts, adhered them together, inked them, and then used glossy accents to give them some shine.
I thought I posted about this one... but I guess not? 

Penguins are my favorite animal ever, and this adorable penguin paired with the cool color combo just makes me smile.
Original post can be found here.

I'm a total glitter girl and can't help but love the glitter on every part of this card! No patterned papers either but the distressed Kraft cardstock makes a nice background.
Original post can be found here.

Love the background paper and the way all of the elements came together.
Original post can be found here.

This rosette tree was inspired by a project I saw on the Cricut website. I took my own take on it from the original instructions but I love the way it turned out!
Original post can be found here.


I have a hard time picking favorites... 
if that wasn't completely obvious already. :)

Happy New Year!

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Hope Your Birthday Is As Sweet As You!

As some of you may know I have a challenge blog called Red Carpet Studio. We launched back in September and offer alternating weekly card and layout challenges, all inspired by movies. Challenges run from Sunday through Saturday evening each week and we always have a sponsored prize and choose our top three spotlight submissions. It's a lot of fun and the design team is so talented! While I've done a LOT of behind the scenes work these past few months to help get the blog up and running, I have yet to participate in an actual challenge! I know, I know, shame on me...

Since it's the fifth week of the month which only happens a few times a year, we do an anything goes themed challenge. This week's challenge is inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! Create any "sweet" project - meaning candy, cake, cookies, etc. One lucky, randomly chosen winner will receive a FREE blog makeover from Vampire Craftin! Stacy designed my blog and she does AMAZING work! Definitely a challenge worth entering. :)

My boss's birthday is this week and I decided to make her a birthday card, featuring something sweet, of course. :)


The patterned papers are from the DCWV 8 Stack paper collection and the solid turquoise and green cardstock is also by DCWV. The cupcake is cut at 2.75" from the Sweet Treats Cricut cartridge and the white scallop is cut at 4" from Cricut Craft Room Basics. The sentiment is computer generated.


I added some Crystal Stickles to the flower and sprinkles on the cupcake and added Turquoise Stickles around the white scallop. All papers aside from the sentiment and base cardstock are slightly distressed with blue ink. The turquoise circle is embossed with the D'vine Swirl embossing folder using my Cuttlebug.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you are having a lovely weekend and take some time to enter this week's challenge at Red Carpet Studio! We'd love to have you. :)

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Thank You "Snow" Much!

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone! Oh how time flies. Even though it feels like just yesterday I was working on Christmas cards, now it's time to get going on those thank you cards for all the wonderful gifts I received. Santa sure was good to me this year! I received four new Cricut cartridges (Birthday Bash, Everyday Paper Dolls, Sweethearts, & Sweet Treats) and 13 colors of Tim Holtz Distress Stickles! I have all of the colors in the regular Stickles collection, now I'm working on building up my Distress Stickles collection. :) I also received some Michael's gift cards so yesterday I did a little shopping and scored some sweet deals on embellishments and after-Christmas items, they were already setting up for spring when I was there! How crazy is that?!

While Michael's may be getting ready for spring... I sure am not! There's too many ideas for winter cards that I still have to create. :) So I started with this one... a cute, winter-themed thank you card.


All papers are from the Stack 8 paper pack by DCWV - there's so many fun patterned papers in this collection! I'll definitely be using this one quite often.


The Thank You sentiment is a rubber stamp from my stash and the lace was picked up in my Michael's haul for only 99 cents! Couldn't pass that up. I also distressed the edges of the sentiment and the patterned papers with some blue ink.


The snowflakes are cut at 2.25" and 2" from the Winter Lace cartridge and stamped with Peachy Keen Stamps. :) I also added some sparkle using Crystal Stickles.


I'm entering this card into the following challenges:
Crafty Ribbons - Blue & Green
Crafty Sentiments - All that Glitters
Elphine House - Snow & Swirls
Fab 'n' Funky - Ribbon & Lace
High Hopes Stamps - Anything Goes
The House That Stamps Built - 2 Shades of Blue
Nutcrafters - Lots of Layers & Sparkle/Bling
Shopping our Stash - Winter NOT Christmas

Thanks "snow" much for stopping by! :)

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! It's been such a busy past few weeks I've only had time to think about what I would like to craft and not actually craft, lol. I thought I'd share a quick card I made today before all the holiday festivities begin!

I've been admiring this cute little gingerbread man and his home in the Create a Critter 2 handbook for quite a while now and thought it was time to finally bring them to life. :) 





I sort of went Stickles-crazy with this card... there are days when I am such a glitter girl! I used Christmas Red, Green, and Baby Blue to accent the gingerbread house, the gingerbread man, and the sentiment. The house was cut at 3.25 inches and the gingerbread man was cut at 2 inches. The 'Happy Holidays' sentiment is one I found in the $1 bin at Michael's a while back. I also distressed the edge of the background paper (which is from the Recollections Jolly Jamboree paper pack) with Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Walnut. 

Since there's so many Christmas challenges going on right now, I thought I'd enter this card into a few of them. My first time linking up to multiple challenges, woo hoo! :)

Di's Digi Designs - Christmas
Glitter n Sparkle - Christmas/New Year
House of Gilli - Add Sparkle
Kaboodle Doodles - Christmas/Holidays, or New Years
Lawnscaping - Make it Shine
One Stop Craft - A Christmas Carol
Stamp and Create - Sparkly Christmas
The Pink Elephant - Anything Goes
There She Goes - Last Minute Christmas


 Have a very Merry Christmas! I hope Santa is good to you. :)

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Oh Christmas Tree Blog Hop Winners

Thanks to all who participated in the Oh Christmas Tree Blog Hop this past weekend! Here are the winners from the hop:
$15 Gift Certificate
WINNER: SARAH

$6 worth of digital stamps
WINNER: MARIANNE

Winners - Please email Ashley at especiallymadeblog@gmail.com to claim your prize no later than Tuesday Sunday December 23rd. At that time another winner will be chosen.

Thanks again to all who participated!

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Anything Goes at Go Fish!

This week's challenge at Go Fish Challenge Blog is anything goes! Create any project you'd like and submit it for a chance to win a Darice embossing folder!
For today's anything goes challenge I created an exploding box using my good ol' Peachy Keen Stamps.

The snowmen are cut from the Stretch Your Imagination at 3" and the snowflakes are cut at 2" from the Winter Lace cartridge. The actual exploding box is cut from the Artiste cartridge to fit a 12 x 12 piece of scrapbook paper. I embellished the snowflakes with Stickles and also added some ribbon, pearls, and bling to give their bases some flair.

Hope to see you join us in this week's challenge!

Friday, December 14, 2012

Oh Christmas Tree Blog Hop

Welcome to the Oh Christmas Tree Blog Hop, brought to you by the design teams of Made Especially For You and Red Carpet Studio!


Today the design teams of Made Especially For You and Red Carpet Studio have teamed up to share with you all sorts of Christmas tree projects to help you get ready for the Christmas season!

 If you're looking to start at the beginning of the hop,
 you're in the right place! 

For today's hop, I made a Christmas tree with rosettes! I saw this idea on the Cricut website about a month or so ago and thought it would be really cool to try. I'm really happy with the way it turned out!


The tree is about 6 inches tall and a perfect accent to my crafting table! The rosettes were made using the Artiste cartridge and Recollections paper from the Jolly Jamboree paper pack. The star topper is a star-shaped wood piece that I painted red and sealed with red glitter. :) In between each of the rosettes are wood circles that I hot glued together to make mini stands. The directions originally said to use empty ribbon spools, but I didn't have enough of those so I decided to make my own bases with wood pieces. The bottom of the tree is an empty ribbon spool, though. 

You can find the directions for this project: HERE.

We have some wonderful sponsors giving away prizes to those who comment on every stop of the hop!
Paper Piecings by Nikki
$15 Gift Certificate


$6 worth of digital stamps

Participants have through Sunday evening to hop. The winners of the blog candy will be announced on Made Especially For You on Tuesday December 18th. Please make sure to leave your contact information when commenting to be eligible to win!

Your next stop is Tonya's blog. Here's the complete lineup in case you get lost along the way:


Happy Hopping!

Friday, December 7, 2012

600 Follower Giveaway WINNER!

Before I announce the winner of my 600 Follower Giveaway I'd like to sent out a HUGE thanks to all of those who have found interest in my blog and became a follower from the very beginning, and to all those who became followers to support my blog and giveaway. Made Especially For You wouldn't exist without you!

Drum roll, please.....
The winner of all these crafty goodies is....
#19 - CraftyGirl!
She said "Just became a follower good luck you are almost there."

Congratulations! I will be emailing you so you can claim your prize! If I don't hear back from you within one week, another winner will be chosen.

Thanks again to all that participated! Now it's time to start planning a bigger and better giveaway for when I reach 700 followers! Yikes!


Monday, December 3, 2012

Birthday Cake Shaped Card!

Before I get to the project I created today... I'd like to announce that this is my 300th post! How crazy is that?! I can't believe I've done this 300 times already... that's just so surreal. To celebrate my 300th post, I made a birthday cake shaped card (hitting a monumental amount of posts is sort of like having a birthday... right? :) for this week's Peachy Keen Stamps Challenge! The challenge this week is called "Shape It Up!" and is to create a shaped card. My favorite!

I won a spot in the top three in the last Peachy challenge I entered, so I'm super excited to enter this one! Here's what I made:



This cute little cake was cut using the Simply Charmed cartridge at 4.75" and of course I used my Peachy Keen Stamps! Here's a complete list of the supplies used to make the card:

- Cricut Expression w/Simply Charmed cartridge
- PK-493 Every Day Face Parts Stamp Set
- PK-573 Paper Doll Faces Stamp Set
- Pink, yellow, blue, green, and white colored cardstock from Recollections
- Polka dot paper from the DCWV Dots, Stripes, & Plaids stack
- Cuttlebug w/Divine Swirl and Polka Dot embossing folders
- Glam Pink Stickles
- Star Dust Stickles

Thanks so much for stopping by! Make sure to check out the PKS Challenge Blog for more inspiration for this week's challenge, the design team has some gorgeous cards!

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Go Fish Christmas Challenge!

As much as I know I'll regret saying this give or take a few weeks... I just love making Christmas cards! This is my favorite time of year and I love having the opportunity to use all my fun Christmas-themed embellishments and cartridges that I anxiously wait to use all year. I've been making Christmas cards like crazy lately and know that it will burn off soon and I'll be anxious to create other projects... but until then I'm enjoying it while it lasts!

I didn't own the Create a Critter cartridge last Christmas, but when I got it this past spring I knew I just had to make a card using the adorable reindeer! I thought this week's anything goes Christmas challenge at the Go Fish Challenge Blog was the perfect opportunity. :)



The card is 4.5" by 6" and created with Kraft card stock, patterned and solid colored paper from Recollections, pop dots, and Stickles (Christmas Red, Green, and Frosted Lace). The 'Happy Holidays' sentiment is one I picked up last year at Hobby Lobby and the accent its on is cut from the Elegant Edges cartridge. I love the added sparkle from the Stickles!

I've also entered this card in this week's Inspired By Stamping Inspiration Challenge. The challenge is to create a project using red/green/white as the main colors, inspired by this gorgeous photo: 

Time for me to go finish up some more Christmas cards!


Don't forget to join us in this week's challenge! :)

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Christmas Cards 2012: Part One

The Christmas card factory in my craft room has opened for the season! LOL, I've been cranking out Christmas cards like crazy lately, and can't wait to share them all with you! I've decided to create a series of posts showcasing the different sets of cards I've been working on, rather than making a giant post filled with everything I've made. 

Today I'd like to share with you a set of 30 Christmas cards I made for my mom to send out to her friends and our family. I didn't want to make 30 of the exact same card, so I made 3 different cards in sets of 10. They're all the same size and shape, they just have different designs on the front. I tried to keep it simple, but I have such a hard time keeping things clean and simple! It truly is a challenge for me. 

Anyways... I'm not as pleased with the cards as I'd like to be, but overall I think they came out nice and are definitely very cheerful. The cards measure about 5" by 6.25" and all papers are from the "Bright Christmas" paper stack by Recollections.

Card #1
The stocking on this card is cut from Art Philosophy at 3" and the green and blue accents were cut from Elegant Edges. The 'Joy!' stamp is from the $1 bin at Michael's and is super cute!

Card #2
The tree is cut from Stretch Your Imagination at 4" and hand decorated using hole punches and ribbon from my stash. The 'Merry Christmas' stamp is from a Studio G pack and the accent pieces were cut from Art Philosophy.

Card #3
The ornament was cut from Art Philosophy at 3.5" and the background accent was cut from Elegant Edges. The 'Happy Holidays' sentiment is also from the $1 bin at Michael's and the background is from Art Philosophy as well.

Inside of each of the cards
The stamp on the inside of the cards is from the same clear stamp set from Studio G as the 'Merry Christmas' sentiment used on Card #2. I left plenty of room for writing and my personal stamp is on the back of every card. :)

How are your Christmas cards coming along? I'd love to see them! 
Leave a link and I'll make sure to stop by. :)

Monday, November 26, 2012

Sunshine Blogger Award

I'm very excited to announce that I am a proud recipient of the Sunshine Blogger Award! Thanks so much, Sandra, for passing it on to me - you're so sweet! :)


Here are the rules for the Sunshine Award:
1. Include the award logo in your post (check!)
2. Thank the blogger who gave it to you and link back to them (done!)
3.) Answer 10 questions about yourself that you have come up with (see below!)
4. Nominate up to 10 bloggers and let them know (on my way!)


1. When did you start crafting?
I started "seriously" crafting about a year and a half ago... but I have always been a crafter in some way, shape, or form. When I was kid my favorite thing to make was giant cards made out of poster boards for my friends' birthdays!

2. What's your favorite color?
Maroon :)

3. What's one fun fact about yourself?
I can't wink my right eye... only my left one. Oh, and I can't whistle.

4. What is your occupation?
I currently work two part-time library jobs but am studying to become an elementary school teacher.

5. What's your favorite food?
That's a tough one... anything salty/sweet!

6. Do you have any pets?
I have one dog named Cody, he's a soft-coated wheaten terrier and such a sweetheart.

7. What's your favorite part about blogging?
Being able to share the projects I've made with other crafters and being inspired by all the gorgeous work I see. :)

8. What are your favorite items to craft with?
Oooh! Anything sparkly... and my Cricut of course! 

9. What do you like to do when you're not crafting?

I love to read, and baking is fun, too!

10. Have any obsessions?
Paper, paper, and more paper!

Now to pass this award on to 10 fabulous bloggers....

Stacy from Vampire Craftin - For designing my awesome blog layout!

Tonya from Scrapping Fun with Tonya - For always being so helpful! 

Beckie from Just B Creative Crazy - For helping kick off the Made Especially For You challenges!

And as a whole... I would like to pass this award on to all of my design team members... Even though I'm so sad our challenges are coming to an end, I am so, so, grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and get to know everyone! They are such a fabulous team and their creations each week leave me in awe because of how gorgeous they always are! Not to toot my own horn or anything - but they're one of the most talented design teams I've ever seen!

Cyndy from Arcy Scraps
Jessica from Craftin' and Stampin'

A big thanks to each and every one of you!


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