MEFY Stitching Challenge!

Happy Monday! It's technique week here at Made Especially For You - probably one of my favorite challenges of the month. I love trying out new techniques that I don't normally use on my cards.

This week's challenge is to create a card using the technique of stitching. It can be faux or real, whatever you feel comfortable with!

Our awesome sponsor this week, The Cutting Cafe, asked the design team to use some of their St. Patrick's Day digis on our cards. For my card, I actually incorporated two of them, one being the clover flower pot, and the second being the sentiment on the flower pot itself. 

 This is probably one of the quickest cards I've ever made, and also probably the closest card I've ever made that resembles a greeting card you would purchase at a store, just because it's so basic. and un-embellished. The image was colored with your everyday colored pencils. 

Close-up of the faux stitching and the sentiment. Sorry it's so hard to read! It says 'Happy St. Patrick's Day,' and then 'Just for you...' underneath the shamrock. 

The Cutting Cafe will allow the winner to choose three sets of digital images from their store! To enter the challenge, all you have to do is create a card using the technique of stitching (faux or real) and submit it to the linky gadget on the 'Weekly Challenge' page here on my blog. You also have a chance of being in the 'Top 3' and receiving a special badge to display on your blog. :) We'd love for you to play along with us!

March is a HUGE month for Made Especially For You. Not only are the weekly challenges continuing, but there will also be a Cricut cartridge giveaway, a joint design team blog hop, AND two new features - Thursday Craft 'n Chat and Do You Speak Cricut Saturdays. It all begins on March 1st! Make sure to check back then for more information about the exciting things happening at Made Especially For You!

Have a fabulous day!

Ashley

Valentine's Card with A Tag

Made Especially For You is back with its theme of the month challenge! This month's theme is none other than the lovely Valentine's Day. The challenge:

Create a Valentine's Day card featuring a tag.

Here's what I came up with:

You can click here to enter the challenge as well as receive some inspiration from the design team. Our sponsor this week is the wonderful Liz from Decade of Scrap, and she will be giving away up to three sets of digital Valentine's Day sentiments to the winner!

By submitting a card to the challenge, you are not only eligible to be randomly chosen as the winner of the sponsor's prize, but you also have the opportunity to be in the 'top three' as well. We would love to have you play along with us! :)

Ashley

PSC #17: Missing A Button

Hi everyone! I'm so excited to announce today that I am now a member of The Perfect Sentiment design team! :) I was a guest designer for the month of January and couldn't of been more thrilled when I was given the option to stay on as a regular member. I love their challenges!

The Challenge: Create a card with a sentiment of "missing you"

The Twist: Use a button/buttons on your card

Buttons have become one of my favorite embellishments to use, so I was really excited about making a card for this challenge. Here's what I came up with:

The paper is from the 'All Dressed Up' stack by DCWV and the layout of the card is based off an old Mojo Monday sketch, which you can view here. 

We're just playing for fun this week - check out the fabulous creations by the other designers for some more inspiration:

Jennipher

Sarah

Jan

Sassy

Abby

Theresa

Jessica

Maggie

Sam

Thanks for stopping by! Check back each Wednesday for another Perfect Sentiment challenge creation.

Ashley

First Sketch Challenge!

This week is Made Especially For You's first-ever sketch challenge! Thanks to our new sketch designer, Beckie, for creating the sketch for this week! :)  Starting in February, there will be a sketch challenge the second week of each month.

Isn't it super cute?! :) The hearts definitely caught my eye, right away I knew I had to make a Valentine's Day card, even though the hearts could definitely be substituted with something else. Here's my take on this lovely sketch:

What I Used To Make The Card:

- Patterned 'love' paper with red, pink, white and black cardstock

- Cuttlebug with 'D'vine Swirl' embossing folder

- Foam hearts

- White and pink brads

- 'Pink lemonade' twine

- 'Love' sentiment in black ink

The design team and I would love if you participated in this week's sketch challenge! The winner will receive their choice of 3 digital images from our wonderful sponsor, K 'n K Designs. 

Thanks for reading!

Ashley

PSC #16: Friendship Sketch

It's all about friendship this week at The Perfect Sentiment! This is my last week as a guest designer and I'm grateful for the new friends I've made during this past month. :) The challenge is to create a friendship inspired by the following sketch:

This sketch is for a circle card. If you do not have the ability to create a circle card then create a square card and include the circles as layers. 

I had a lot of fun using this sketch as inspiration for my card! Here's what I came up with:

This week's sponsor is Pattie's Creations, and she will be giving away the winner's choice of one digital image. 

For more inspiration for this week's challenge, check out the creations of the other designers:

Jennipher

Sarah

Jan

Sassy

Abby

Theresa

Jessica

Maggie

Guest Designers:

Karen

Tabitha

You can also create a friendship card (or kill two birds with one stone and use the same one, like I did) to enter my blog's friendship card challenge this week. Thanks so much for stopping by! :)

Ashley

PSC #15: Resist-Embossed Birthday

The challenge this week over at The Perfect Sentiment is to create a birthday card using the resist embossing technique. This is a new technique for me, seeing as the only embossing I usually use is dry embossing with my Cuttlebug. I enlisted the help of my good crafty friend Tammy to help me out. :) Thanks, Tammy!

My mom's birthday is coming up and I decided to make this card for her. I wanted to use her two favorite colors, purple and orange, but didn't have any papers that looked good together. So, I used the multi-colored paper from The Birthday Extravaganza mat stack by The Paper Studio and emphasized the resist-embossed purple sentiment and the orange balloons. 

The awesome sponsor this week is My Little Somethings, and they will be giving away a grab bag of crafting supplies at a minimum of $15! This giveaway is limited to US participants, but in the event a non-US resident wins, they will be awarded with digital images, instead. 

Thanks for reading! Make sure to stop by The Perfect Sentiment to enter the challenge and also view the fantastic creations of the other designers and guest designers! Happy Wednesday! :)


Ashley

Based On A Book Blog Hop

***Interested in becoming part of the Made Especially For You design team? Click here***

Welcome to the Based On A Book Blog Hop! 

Thanks so much for joining us! This hop is all about books, along the way you'll see many book-inspired projects and have the chance to win some blog candy! If you've come from Amy Jo's blog, then you're in the right place. :) If you've just come across the hop and would like to start from the beginning, please visit Ashley's blog.

I'm so excited to be participating in this hop because I have always loved to read and currently work at a library, so this was definitely a hop I knew I needed to sign up for. I have so many favorite books, and had a hard time choosing which one would be the best inspiration for a card. Part of my job is helping out in the children's department of the library, and I thought it would be fun to make a card based off a children's book. It just so happens that I got the Winnie the Pooh Font cartridge for Christmas, and as soon as I saw it I knew a Winnie the Pooh card was going to be my project for this hop.

I'm absolutely in love with this card - I'm so happy with the way it turned out! The quote is an actual quote from the book (I plan on decorating the inside later using another quote). Pooh was cut at 3" and the pot of honest was cut at 1.5", both images are from the Pooh Font cartridge. 

And now for the fun part of the hop... blog candy! I'll be giving away the following crafty goodies:

Sorry about the glare! 

- 1 package of oranges flowers from Studio G

- 1 set of clear stamps with gems by Studio G

- 1 package of green rhinestones

- 1 spool of glittery purple ribbon

Entering to win is easy! Here's what you have to do:
1.) Become a follower (if you aren't already)
2.) Leave a comment on this post with your contact information
3.) 'Like' the Made Especially For You Facebook page

The winner will be announced on Monday January 16th, entries should be submitted no later than Sunday at midnight US Central Time.

Thanks so much for hopping along with us! Now hop on over to Charity's blog to see another book-inspired project. :) 

PSC #14: Photo-Inspired Sympathy

I'm back again with another guest designer card for The Perfect Sentiment. :) The challenge this week is to create a sympathy card based off the following photo:

I absolutely love doing these photo inspiration sketches. They're so much fun! Here's my take on the sketch:

The card is really simple, I didn't want to do anything too over-the-top for a sympathy card. Plus, the picture is very calm and tranquil, and I wanted to keep the card that way, too, rather than making it busy. The white paper flowers are handmade, and the blue accent piece is embossed with the D'vine Swirl embossing folder.

As you can obviously tell, I used the colors in the photo on my card. I tried to use the same amount of each color as there is in the photo (a lot of white, a decent amount of turquoise, and a touch of black). I also used the shape of the pond for the bottom half of the card and embossed it to give it the effect of the gentle ripples.

Our awesome sponsor this week is Shelly's Images. The winner will receive one digi image of their choice.

This card is also my challenge creation for the weekly challenge this week here at Made Especially For You - create a card featuring machine embossing. Click here to check it out, I would love if you played along with us! Thanks for reading, check back next Wednesday for another The Perfect Sentiment guest designer card! :)

Ashley

PSC #13: Valentine with Vellum

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I'm excited to announce that I've been chosen to be a guest designer over at The Perfect Sentiment for the month of January! I've been playing along with them for a few weeks now, and I've come to really love their challenges. Check them out if you have the chance! :)

This week's challenge is to create a card with a sentiment for "Valentine's Day" AND use vellum on your project. How fun! :) After making nonstop Christmas and winter cards, it was nice to make a different-themed card for a change. Here's what I came up with:

Vellum was used for a layer on the heart, as well as the surface that the sentiment is stamped on. 

The sponsor for this the challenge over at The Perfect Sentiment this week is Eyelets Etc. They'll be giving away a sheet of vellum stickers to the winner! 

Thanks so much for reading! Check back each Wednesday in January to see my guest designer cards! :)


Ashley

Photo Inspiration by Perfect Sentiments

I just drank my first cup of hot chocolate of the season and am ready to settle down and write this post. :) Tonight I'd like to share with you the card I made for this week's Perfect Sentiments challenge. 

The flowers look coral-colored in the picture (I'm so sorry!) but they really are pink like the flowers in the inspiration photo are, I promise. 

The challenge was to create a card reflecting an anniversary sentiment based off the following picture:

When I first saw the picture, I automatically knew I wanted to use the colors in the photo, white and black with a hint of blue. I also knew I wanted to use some form of lacy ribbon to match the curtain, but then I didn't know where to go from there. After contemplating for a while, I decided to use the flowers in the picture and found the 'perfect sentiment' (no pun intended) to match the card. I handmade the flowers using a flower punch and watercolor paint, and added the pearls around the border of the die cut shape. I'm actually really pleased with how it turned out! :)

Thanks for reading! :) 

Ashley

'Happy Birthday' Snowflake Card

Happy Monday, everyone! :) The weekly challenge here at Made Especially For You this week is to create a card or scrapbook layout featuring snow or snowflakes - my favorite! The timing between this challenge and my cousin's birthday worked perfectly, she had a sweet sixteen party over the weekend that was decorated with snowflakes, penguins, etc. I made her a birthday card featuring snowflakes to match the theme of her party: 

The card is 5 in x 5 in.

The card was also based off the same Mojo Monday sketch that the card in my previous post is based off, which you can view here. For those of you who saw the exploding box I created for a challenge a while back, these are the same winter papers from Little Yellow Bicycle that I used to create the box.

Materials Used:

~ Winter papers by Little Yellow Bicycle

~ Green ribbon by Studio G

~ 'Happy Birthday' clear stamp with black ink

~ White cardstock

~ Silver glitter

~ Glitter snowflakes and a white button

~ Pop dots, double-sided tape, tacky glue and glue dots

Make sure to check out the weekly challenge if you haven't already. Our sponsor, K 'n K Designs, is giving away the winner's choice of three digital stamp sets! 

Once I'm finished with my last two finals tomorrow, I'll have an entire month to catch up on crafting and regular posting - I can't wait! :) I'm looking forward to having time to craft without trying to make a card in a time crunch, it'll be so nice.

Have a great week! :) 

Ashley

Ornament Challenge & My First Digi Stamp Card!

Happy Monday, everyone! Today I'd like to share with you the ornament I made for the weekly challenge here at Made Especially For You and also the first card I made using a digital stamp! :) 


The ornament I used for the challenge this week is actually an ornament I made last year. I made about thirty of these for my fourth-grade TA class last year for Christmas - they loved them! I bought clear candy bags and put them in there with some candy and tied them together with a ribbon and with a tag that had there names on it - I wish I had taken pictures so I could share them! :/ I ended up having an extra penguin ornament because one of the kids moved so I saved it for my own tree, and was able to take a picture of it this year. :)

The ornament is made out of wood pieces that I painted using acrylic paint and hot-glued together. If I remember right, I believe I used one large heart for the body, two ovals for the wings, two stars for the feet, one small circle for the head, and one small heart for the beak. I used pipe cleaners to make the candy cane and then a red pipe cleaner and pom pons for the earmuffs. I attached a red loop of ribbon on the back so it could be an ornament. I "scraplifted" the project idea from the Michael's store website, I tried finding a link but couldn't, I found it over a year ago so I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't posted anymore.

The sponsor the challenge this week is the super cute Digi Doodle Shop, and I couldn't resist using one of their adorable digital stamps. I found this cute penguin to match the ornament, and also realized there was an ornament on the card to match this week's challenge - how perfect! :) I colored him using colored pencils (I don't own any Copics, and this was my first time using a digital stamp) and made a really simple card.

I added some cotton to the fur trim on the hat to give it a more 3D effect.

Thanks so much for reading! Make sure to stop by the challenge page and enter an ornament if you haven't already - your creation will be entered for a chance to win a $10 gift certificate to the Digi Doodle Shop!

Ashley

Easy As 1, 2, 3! Challenge Card

I hope you all had a fabulous holiday weekend! I certainly enjoyed my break from schoolwork, although I'm not thrilled to pick up where I left off today. :/ At least this week's challenge is here to cheer me up! :) 


The challenge this week here at Made Especially For You is to create a card or scrapbook layout featuring '3' of something, whether it be ribbons, colors, papers, brads, etc. Click here to view the DT's awesome creations and also enter the challenge!


I created a simple card for the challenge this week, with the end of the semester workload increasing, it's been harder and harder to find time to craft. I can already tell I won't be sleeping much this week because of all the things I have to get done. Anyways, enough of my rambling, here's the card I made for the challenge:

  Left: Front view of the card                         Right: Side view of the card

I'm glad I'm finally getting the hang of taking better pictures! The lighting in my bathroom is actually fairly decent, and using white cardstock as both a vertical and horizontal backdrop helps a lot. 

I absolutely fell in love with the background paper when I first saw it at Michael's. I love the fun colors and stripes! It's been a while since I've made a bright card, so I was excited when I got to use it for the challenge. I used three circles as well as three rectangles to comply with the challenge. 

What I Used To Make The Card:

~ Background paper (sorry, I forgot the name! It's made by Recollections)

~ Blue, light pink, pink, purple & white cardstock paper

~ 1" circle punch

~ 'Just For You' stamp with black ink

~ Cuttlebug with the 'Spots n' Dots' embossing folder

~ Glue dots, paper trimmer & scissors

Thanks so much for stopping by! We hope you play along with us! :)

Ashley

Education Cards & A Blog Candy Winner

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying the start of the holiday week! My creation for the Thanksgiving challenge this week was featured in the Give Thanks Blog Hop I participated in over this past weekend. You can view the card here. Unfortunately no more entries are being accepted for a chance to win the blog candy because... we have a winner!


Congratulations to Denise over at VinDeeLoo's This 'n That on winning 100 sheets of paper! I'll be contacting you shortly so you can claim your prize.


I recently participated in an Education Panel event at my college and was asked to make thank-you cards for the eleven teachers that were on the panel. I was so excited! Unfortunately I was asked a bit last minute and was in a time crunch, so I enlisted the help of my friend Tammy over at My Cricut Craft Chamber! Thanks so much Tammy for providing me with the adorable apples and chalkboards. :) Here are some pictures of the cards:

Close-up of the card. I found a black and white clipart picture of a ruler online and printed it on yellow-gold cardstock and then cut them all out by hand.

\

Side view. There's a typed thank you message on the inside with either red or green background paper, I didn't have enough of either to fill all eleven cards so I made half of each.

All eleven of the cards

Thanks so much for reading! If you haven't already, stop by the 'Weekly Challenge' page to see some fabulous Thanksgiving projects created by the DT and also enter your Thanksgiving project for a chance to win some super cute clipart sets from MyGrafico!


Ashley

Tri-Fold Card

Hi everyone! I hope you all are having a great week. My stress level has been absolutely through the roof lately, so it's been hard to find craft. When I do have the time, though, it definitely makes for a good stress reliever. 

The weekly DT challenge over at Becky's Sweet Creations this week is to create a tri-fold card. I've only made one tri-fold card before, and that was for the Becky's Sweet Creations Boy/Girl Blog Hop I participated in about a month ago. I actually used the same template from that card to make this card, which you can view here. The only difference is that this time I made my tri-fold card horizontal instead of vertical, which is something I personally have never seen done before.

I had to put this card together rather quickly, as I've been swamped with everything and am slowly starting to fall behind my crafting schedule. :( The card was inspired from the polka dot paper that is used as the outside of the card. From there I just found whatever supplies I could that matched the colors of the polka dots, and just went with the flow from there. 

View of the bottom of the card. The blue paper is embossed with a mini flower embossing folder with my Cuttlebug. I left a blank yellow space at the bottom where a message could be written.

The letters are from a scrapbook kit I won a few months ago, unfortunately for the life of me I can't remember the name of it. It's a really cute kit that came with a lot of fun colored paper and embellishments. The flower stickers came from there as well. 

Outside of the card. I tied green ribbon around it to help keep it closed and to also give it a "present" appearance since it's a birthday card. I'm terrible at tying bows... I'm working on it!

I'm really sorry about the poor quality of these pictures. It's been non-stop cloudy for a few days now and because of that I havent' had any natural sunlight to take the pictures near. The lighting in my house is terrible for pictures and I take them with the camera on my iPod. Over winter break one of my goals is to come up with a spot for all of my craft pictures to be taken so that they actually look nice. Thanks for bearing with me. :) 

Thanks so much for reading! If you haven't already, take a moment to stop by the Weekly Challenge page to enter this week's PageMap sketch challenge. Our sponsor is giving away a great prize! 


Happy Wednesday! :)


Ashley

Weekly DT Challenge - PageMap Sketch

Good morning everyone! I'm not usually up this early on my day off (who doesn't like to sleep in?!) but this weekend is a rare one and I have the ENTIRE weekend off of work (yay!) so I'm spending it in the beautiful city of Chicago with my boyfriend. :) I wanted to get this post up today so that when I return on Sunday I can have everything ready for the brand new Made Especially For You weekly challenges.


The challenge at Becky's Sweet Creations this week was to create a card based off a PageMap sketch, which I've posted below. It's been a while since I've made a black and white card, and as soon as I saw the "flags" on the sketch I knew my black and white adhesive ribbons would be the perfect embellishments.

Close-up of the embossing

PageMap sketch the card is based off of

What I Used To Make The Card:
- Black and white cardstock paper
- Cuttlebug with Spots 'n Dots embossing folder
- Black and white patterned adhesive ribbon
- iRock with black and white gems
- White flower embellishment
- 'hello' stamp in white ink
- Circle cutter


Have a fabulous weekend! :)


Ashley

My First Easel Card!

The weekly DT challenge at Becky's Sweet Creations this week is to create an easel card. While I have seen some absolutely stunning easel cards made by fellow bloggers, I myself had never made one until just recently. I'll admit I was a bit nervous at first seeing as that I usually only make cards that have "standard" shapes, but I found a really good tutorial online (which you can view here) that explained the process really well!


To make an easel card, you need a 12 x 12 sheet of paper. The majority of my paper collection is 8.5 x 11 because I am not a scrapbooker, and the only 12 x 12 sheet I had that was sturdy enough to be a card base was a bold yellow color, which you'll see in the pictures below. I also just bought a new birthday/party clear stamp set on clearance at Michael's for only $2.50 (I couldn't pass it up!) so I turned my easel card into a party invitation. The card itself is only 4 x 4 inches, which made it even more of a challenge to make since I'm used to creating larger cards.

Front view of the card. I left some space at the bottom for an extra message to be written if necessary.

Side view of the card. It doesn't look much like an easel card from the front, but from the side view you can definitely tell! 

What I Used To Make The Card:

- Yellow, white and green cardstock paper

- Blue ink to distress edges

- Birthday/party clear stamp set in blank ink

- Cuttlebug with balloon die cuts

- Liquid adhesive and glue dots

I'm off to do some laundry and get a head start on upcoming challenges. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy the rest of your week! :)

Ashley

Weekly DT Challenge - Handmade Flowers

Hi everyone! I hope you all are having a great week, it's been beautiful here in Northern Illinois, in the 70's every day. Talk about an indian summer! :) I've been a good girl lately and have somehow miraculously caught up with all my homework (which doesn't happen very often) so I've had a lot of extra time for crafting lately. Last night I was actually able to complete this week's and also the next two weeks of challenges for the DT at Becky's Sweet Creations. It feels so good to finally be caught up! 


The challenge this week was to create a card using handmade flowers. I'm still learning how to make them, but with a little more practice I think I'll get there. I'm so lucky to have Becky as a DT leader, she sent me over 100 flower punches! A flower punch is definitely next on my shopping list. :) Here's the card I created for this week's challenge:

The sentiment says 'For A Special Friend' sorry if it's hard to read. 

Here's a close-up of the flowers. Each flower has four punches, so I used about 48 punches all together to make this card. They're painted with acrylic paint and once they dried I pinched them so that each layer was a little more "shriveled" than the next. They're super easy and so fun to make!

What I Used To Make The Card:

- White, yellow, green and purple cardstock paper

- 48 white cardstock flower punches

- Green, yellow and purple acrylic paint

- Cuttlebug with 'Floral Fantasy' embossing folder

- iRock with white gems

- 'For A Special Friend' sentiment in purple ink

- Circle cutter

- Liquid adhesive

Stop by Becky's Sweet Creations to see what other members of the DT came up with using flowers!

Thanks for reading! 

Ashley

Becky's Sweet Creations Boy/Girl Blog Hop - Day 2

Welcome to Day 2 of Becky's Sweet Creations 2 Day Boy/Girl Blog Hop! This weekend we're going to be sharing with you a variety of boy and girl-themed projects that our design team has created. This is our first hop as a design team, and we're so excited to have you with us. Thanks so much for joining us! :)

If you came from Becky's blog then you're in the right place! If you're new to the hop and would like to start at the beginning, you can also visit Becky's blog since hers is the first in the lineup. :)

Here's the complete lineup in case you get lost along the way: 

Becky @ Becky's Sweet Creations

Ashley @ Made Especially For You     <---------- You are here

Lisa @ Lisa's Creative Niche

Laura @ Laura's Crafts and More 

Tammy @ The Cricut Craft Chamber

Carol @ Cardstock Scissors and Glue

Since yesterday's project was girl-themed, today's is boy-themed! I created another pop-up card to share with you, and I'm definitely a lot more pleased with this one than the one I posted yesterday! I hope you like it, too. :) I'll be honest and say that I didn't completely come up with the idea for this card, but I did tweak the original design to make it more of my own. 

This is a close-up of the card, I just love it! If I had the time I would've made a girl version to go along with it, but unfortunately time just didn't allow for it this week. The posts to the laundry line are the pop-ups in this card. The grass, posts and baby clothes were all templates that I found, but the flowers are handmade and I did the embossing and glittering on the grass myself. 

Here's a "long distance" shot of the card. 

What fun would a blog hop be without blog candy?! :) I had so much fun searching through my stash 

looking for boy/girl-themed goodies to giveaway. Luckily I found more than I thought I would! :)

- 12 sheets of 6x6 "boy" themed patterned paper

- Assorted brads in pastel colors

- 'baby' glittered chipboard letters in blue and pink

- Assorted punches

- Assorted chipboard embellishments in pastel colors (perfect for both cards and scrapbooking!)

Here's what you have to do to enter:

1.) Become a follower (if you aren't already)

2.) Comment on a post on either day of the hop (you'll be entered a second time if you comment both days)

3.) Leave a form of contact information in case you're the winner!

The winner will be chosen on Monday October 10th using random.org. I can't wait to give away the goodies! :)

Your next stop is Lisa's blog! Thanks so much for hopping along with us! :)

Ashley