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

**SPONSORS WANTED**

Have a digital stamp store, etsy shop, or simply want to show off your own handmade talents? Become a sponsor for the newest feature of Made Especially For You - weekly challenges! Starting in November, Made Especially For You will be hosting weekly challenges that ALL bloggers are welcome to enter!

Our design team is looking for sponsors to provide a sponsorship for one or more of our weekly challenges. 

What exactly does being a sponsor entail?
  - Offering a prize for the winner of the challenge (the prize is 100% up to the sponsor, they can choose whatever they would like to give away, whether it relates to the challenge or not)

- Promotion of the sponsor's blog through the challenge, Made Especially For You's Facebook page and also through the blogs of the other ten design team members

- The design team is also willing to incorporate your offerings into the challenge, for example if you own a digital stamp store and are giving away a particular set of digital stamps, we would love to use those in our design team challenge sample creations!

Interested in becoming a sponsor? We'd love to have you! Send an e-mail to especiallymadeblog@gmail.com regarding this post and we'll go ahead and send you the available challenges that you can choose from! :)

Ashley
Made Especially For You DT Leader
especiallymadeblog@gmail.com

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

And The Winner Is...

Tammy at My Cricut Craft Chamber! Congratulations, Tammy! I've sent you an e-mail with all of the information.


Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to participate in our hop and support our design team! We cannot express how appreciative we are. We hope to do more hops in the future and we'd love for you to join us!


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

Becky's Sweet Creations Boy/Girl Blog Hop - Day 1

Welcome to 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

I've been experimenting with pop-up cards recently, and the card I'm going to show you is about as simple as a pop-up card can get. :) It was the first one I made and since it relates to the "girl" portion of the hop, I thought it'd be perfect. Tomorrow I'll be sharing with you a more complex pop-up card I made that relates to the "boy" portion. :)

Front of the card

Inside of the card

Close-up of the inside bottom portion 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, make sure to stop by tomorrow, too! :)

Ashley 

Red/Orange/Yellow DT Challenge

Just a quick post this afternoon, I thought I'd share with you the card I made for the DT challenge at Becky's Sweet Creations. The challenge this week was to make a card using only the colors red, orange and yellow. Here's what I came up with:

(The lighter circles look white, but they're actually a pale yellow). 

It's a busy day for me today, I just got home from volunteering to help set up a book sale that the library I work at is having. I'm off to make some lunch, get a haircut and then have a movie night with a friend tonight. And somewhere in there I also have to make time to finish up my blog hop creations! Make sure you stop by this weekend (October 8th & 9th) for the Boy/Girl Blog Hop! I'll be giving away some blog candy, too. :)


Have a great weekend!


Ashley