It's Raining Cats & Dogs

Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a great start to your week. Recently, I won my first blog candy giveaway and thought I'd share with you some cards I made using the prizes I won. Sherry at Up Or Down They're Beautiful was sweet enough to include a few extra goodies along with the matstack I won. Included in those extra goodies was paper from The Pets mat stack by DCWV - the designs are so adorable! 


This is also my first set of "twin" cards I've created. One is cat-themed and the other dog-themed, but the designs are the same. 

This picture shows the close-up of the border around the sentiment. Some of it is hard to read, but the paper is patterned with popular cat and dog names. The cat paper reads "Patches Boots Felix Mittens" and the dog paper reads "Sparky Duke Rover Spot Lady." I thought that was so cute!

The cards were fairly simple to make. I used the paper from the mat stack along with colored cardstock.  My iRock was used to add the white gems and I used the Spots & Dots embossing folder to emboss the paper. I also added white glitter to the white border at the bottom, but it's sort of hard to tell based off the pictures.

Thanks so much for reading, I apologize for the shortness of this post. Classes start next week and I feel like I still have 320520358 things to do, so much for a break! 

Ashley

Quick Birthday Card & Announcements

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Today is my dad's birthday, so I thought I'd share with you the card that I made for him. His favorite color is green and throughout my entire childhood the cards I always made him were completely green. This year I thought I'd chance it up a bit and have green be the focused color of the card, but have some other colors as well. Here's what I came up with:

I was on a crunch for time while making this card so unfortunately I couldn't do anything too elaborate, but the simplicity of it works well.


Here's what I used to make the card:
- Dark green, light green, yellow and white cardstock
- Striped pattern paper
- Light green and dark green brads
- Lace corner punch by Fiskars
- Balloon die cut for Cuttlebug by Provo Craft
- Decorative scissors


And now for some announcements! A couple of weeks ago I mentioned some changes were in the works for Made Especially For You. After the results of my poll, majority of you said you liked the design the way it was and thought it should remain the same. So, I decided to compromise. :) For now, the ribbon background will remain the same, and instead I made a few detailed changes. The fonts on my page have now changed, and I also decreased the size of my sidebar so that my posts are bigger. Here are a couple of other quick announcements:


- It's official; I'm going to be having a 200 Follower Giveaway! As of right now I'm at 152 followers, so hopefully it won't be too much longer until Made Especially For You reaches 200! I should have the giveaway prizes posted within the next week or so, and then you can start entering. :)


- I am looking for someone to help me design and create a blog header and also a blog button that followers can "grab" and post on their blogs. I'll have an official post in a few days, but if you're interested, please let me know! My e-mail is especiallymadeblog@gmail.com.


Thanks for bearing with me, enjoy the rest of your day!


Ashley

Mojo Monday Entry

Although majority of the challenges are just for fun, I can't help but love the weekly challenge over at Mojo Monday. The sketches are always so intriguing and fun to work with! Not to "toot my own horn" or anything, but the card I created this week for the challenge I feel is one of my best so far. I'm so happy with how it turned out! Here's this week's sketch:

And here's my take on the sketch:

It's hard to see in the picture (the second picture shows it the best) but the 'hello' sentiment is propped up on the card using an adhesive strip. I thought about making the background of the sentiment white, but I wanted to use my white iRock gems, so I stayed with black. After seeing the design I made an emergency Michael's run and purchased the flower embellishment as well as the ribbon I used for the bow. The decorative strip above the white rectangle is actually adhesive ribbon that I had from a set I recently purchased. For the bottom "lace" part of the card, I used many cuts of a decorative square die cut and layered them over one another to look like it was one piece, but actually the squares themselves are hidden under the white cardstock. Welcome to the creative mind of someone who doesn't own a Cricut! :)

Thank you so much for reading. Have a great weekend! If you haven't already, please take a moment to answer the poll on the top left-hand side of the homepage. Made Especially For You needs all the input it can get!


Ashley

Birthday Card For A Friend

Happy Wednesday! I hope everyone is enjoying their week. :) Today I thought I'd share with you a birthday card I made. Most of the time my creations are made for fun and to share with you on here, but this week a coworker of mine has an upcoming birthday and I wanted to make a card for her. My dad's birthday is also on the same day, so I'll be making and posting a card for him within the next couple of days as well.

From a distance the ribbon looks kind of odd, almost like "Why would you choose to place that ribbon on this card, it doesn't match." If you look closer, though, you can see that the ribbon contains all of the colors used on the card, and also has sort of a floral pattern to it, which is why the pink and blue shapes are embossed with a floral pattern.

These two pictures focus on the embossing. I used the Floral Fantasy embossing folder with my Cuttlebug.

For the centerpiece, I used both the gift die cut and also the asterisk die cuts. 

These two pictures show the inside of the card. I made sure to use all of the same colors that were used on the front of the card.

I almost forgot to mention that I won my first blog candy giveaway! :) Thanks so much to Sherry at Up Or Down They're Beautiful for the goodies, I can't wait to receive them! Please stop by her blog if you have the chance, her creations are wonderful and she is so sweet. 

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to stop by. If you have an extra moment, please answer the poll on the top left-hand side of my homepage. I'm considering redesigning my blog and would love your help, without you followers this blog would be nothing. Have a great day. :0)

Ashley

Shoot For The Moon Card

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Mine has definitely been relaxing now that my summer classes are finished up and I have a nice 17 day break before the fall semester starts. I plan on getting a lot of card making done in those 17 days so that I don't fall behind once I become swamped with homework! 


This card is definitely one of my favorites! The idea sporadically came to me out of nowhere and I decided to just go with it. It's based off the well-known quote "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars." I believe it's also the first "inspirational" card I've created.

I also decorated the inside of the card, which I don't normally do on cards that I'm just making for fun. The blank white paper in the middle is where a message could be written, I promise I wasn't too lazy to finish the card :O)

Here's what I used to make the card:

Paper: White, light blue & dark blue cardstock, glittered yellow star paper from The Paper Studio

Embossing: Cuttlebug, D'vine Swirl embossing folder

Embellishments: Chipboard moon, light blue brads, wood stars, yellow acrylic paint, gold & white glitter

Stamping: Mini alphabet stamps made by Studio G, cyan ink

Basic Tools: Paper trimmer, decorative scissors, Elmer's glue pen, adhesive dots

The collage below shows how I personally created the stars that are used on the front of the card. I started off with small wood stars and then painted each of them with light yellow acrylic paint. Once the paint had dried, I used an Elmer's glue pen to drizzle glue on star and then sprinkled them with gold glitter.

And that's basically it! Once everything was attached on the front of the card, I used the glue pen to draw lines coming out of the stars and then sprinkled those with both gold and white glitter. 

Now that I have some time on my hands these next couple of weeks, I'm going to be working on taking my blog to the "next level,"  so to speak. When I first created this blog I couldn't find a template that I liked enough to use, so I went with Blogger's ribbon background and told myself it was temporary. I've grown to like it, but also feel that Made Especially For You could use a little makeover. 

I'm undecided about changing the design, so I'm leaving it up to my followers, to whom it affects the most! I've created a poll on the top left-hand side of my home page, if you could please take a moment to answer it, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks so much for reading and for all of your support! My two month blogaversary is coming up and I'm hoping to coordinate my first blog candy giveaway by then - stay tuned!

Ashley

Happy Anniversary 2nd Challenge Card

I think I'm becoming addicted - to challenges! This is only my second challenge entry, but I can already tell it definitely won't be the last. Like last week, I entered the Mojo Monday challenge again, except this week they're playing for prizes! There's still a little time left to enter if you're interested, here's this week's sketch:

I've always wanted to incorporate triangles into one of my cards and also make a black and red card, so this was the perfect opportunity for both. It took me a while to think of, but here's what I came up with:

Here's some close ups of the card, you can view them larger by clicking on them. The left picture focuses on the embossing (Polka Dot embossing folder by Provo Craft) and the right picture focuses on the sentiment. 

This card was made using:
Paper: Red, white & black cardstock
Sentiment: 'Happy Anniversary' stamp with red ink
Embossing: Cuttlebug with Polka Dot embossing folder
Embellishments: White & red chipboard flower, black & white patterned adhesive ribbon
Basic Supplies: Paper trimmer, decorative scissors, black marker, Elmer's glue pen, adhesive dots

What are some of your favorite weekly challenges? Feel free to post links, I would love to take a look!


Also, if you have the time, please take a moment to answer the poll on the top left-hand side of the homepage. Thanks! :)


Ashley

Read S'more Books

Whew, these last few days have been a whirlwind of writing papers, memorizing algebra formulas, completing tedious homework assignments and working at the library. I've had this post planned since Saturday and am just now finding the time to post it. 


I thought I'd change things up a bit and show you one of my favorite parts of my job working in the children's department at the library: decorating my bulletin board! I'm responsible for changing the layout on this bulletin board every month or so, and I'm free to do whatever I want with it as long as it relates to reading. Usually I find a cute reading saying and come up with a layout that goes with the saying. For August, I decided to do an end-of-the-summer theme (what kid wants to think about going back to school?) and used the quote "Read S'more Books." 

For the fire, I roughly sketched the flames on red, orange and yellow construction paper and then wadded up pieces of tissue paper and glued them to the construction paper to give it a 3-D effect. I used gray construction paper for the rocks and added silver and gold glitter just for fun.

I created the raccoon based off of a clipart photo and traced him onto gray construction paper and then used a black marker for the stripes. I also attached googly eyes and shredded cotton balls to also give him a 3-D appearance. 

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the letters have red and gold glitter on them and are supposed to look like the smoke and embers that are being given off by the fire. The ideas are always portrayed a lot better in my mind then what they come out looking like. :)

I used black construction paper for the background and cut the edges of green poster paper for the grass, and then added a decorative border. As a future teacher, this is definitely something I always enjoy doing at my job and look forward to doing in my classroom. 

I'll be back to posting cards later this week, one is one that I miraculously had time to create during the past crazy week and the other is for another Mojo Monday challenge I'm entering. Hope you all are having a great week, thanks for stopping by! :)

Ashley