Epilepsy Awareness Blog Hop

Hello crafty friends! Thank you for joining for our Epilepsy Awareness Blog Hop. You will see great projects and read about some of our personal experiences with Epilepsy. Epilepsy is a medical condition that produces different types of seizures. Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide. If you would like to read more information about Epilepsy you can go to the Epilepsy foundation online at: www.epilepsyfoundation.org 


If you came from Holley's blog, you're in the right place! If you just came across the hop and would like to participate, here's the complete lineup:


Holley @ Holley's Blog
Ashley @ Made Especially For You                 <---------- You Are Here
Jessica @ Can You Pixel This
Lora @ Notes From The Scrapbooklady
Michelle @ Crafty Chelle
Rexann @ I Be Circled
Lisa @ Scrapping with Lisa
Zenita @ Scrappin' with Z
Sher @ Patterns by Sher


While I personally do not have Epilepsy, I know of people who do, including a cousin who sometimes suffers from epileptic seizures. I joined this hop because I wanted to help promote Epilepsy awareness and felt this was a great way to do so. 


For the hop, I made an Epilepsy awareness card. If you couldn't tell already, the color for Epilepsy awareness is purple, so I made a primarily purple card.

The card is 5 in x 5 in. I embossed the border with the D'vine Swirl embossing folder and then went over the swirls with an Elmer's glue pen and sprinkled silver glitter, creating my own glitter glue. I also glittered the chipboard letters myself (which are actually a royal purple, not black) and added the purple awareness ribbon and a few rhinestones to match the silver in the border.

This pictures provides a much better perspective of the chipboard letters. You can actually tell they're purple and not black. 

What fun is a blog hop without blog candy?! I'll be giving away the following purple goodies:

What's Included: 28 sheets of 6 x 6 patterned purple paper (4 of each shown in the picture), 2 spools of purple ribbon, purple glitter glue and purple ink by Studio G, 8 adhesive border frames, 6 purple heart punches and assorted purple chipboard pieces. 

Entering to win is simple! 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

And that's it! The winner will be chosen via Random.org and announced on Monday November 14th along with the new weekly challenge. If you haven't already, stop by the 'Weekly Challenge' page and play along with us! This week's challenge is to create a card based off a PageMap sketch. We'd love to have you. :)

You're next stop is Jessica's blog! Thanks for hopping along with us and showing your support for not only our blogs but for epilepsy awareness as well. 

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

PageMap Sketch Challenge

Made Especially For You's weekly challenge this week is to create a card based off a PageMap sketch. I had a lot of fun creating this card, as I love being inspired by sketches and already having a "foundation" for the card, yet being able to make it completely my own. I stuck with the sketch and turned it into a birthday card.

Materials:

- Dark purple, light purple, pink, red, yellow and brown cardstock

- Polka dot patterned cardstock

- Purple and black ink

- 'Happy Birthday' sentiment (clear stamp)

- 3 wood circles covered in yellow, blue and orange tissue paper

- Cuttlebug with 'D'vine Swirl' and 'Spots 'n Dots' embossing folders

- Red, brown, pink and gold glitter

- Elmer's glue pen

- Adhesive dots

The card is based off the following PageMap sketch:

Click here to enter this week's challenge! We'd love to have you play along with us. :)

Thanks so much for all of your support and taking the time to read! Stop by again this friday, November 11th, and support the Epilepsy Awareness Blog Hop. Blog candy included! :)

Ashley

Blue, Green and Pink Challenge

Hi everyone! I'm so excited to announce that Made Especially For You will now have weekly challenges open for all bloggers to enter! This week's challenge is to create a card or scrapbook layout using the colors blue, green and pink. Click here to enter. The challenge is sponsored by Ready, Set, Create! and the winner will receive a one year free subscription to their magazine! We hope you play along with us. :)


Here's my challenge creation:

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

Card Swap Creations :)

If you read my previous post, you know that I recently participated in my first card swap with the design team at Becky's Sweet Creations. Last time I shared with you what I received from the two-part swap (fall-themed cards and Halloween cards) and today I'm going to show you the cards I made for the swap. I wanted to wait until I knew that most of the other ladies received my cards before posting them so that

With my limited supplies, I knew that creating both of these cards were going to be a challenge. I needed materials that I could use a lot of without having to buy more. (I'm trying to cut down my crafting budget, it isn't easy but so far it's successful!) For the fall card, I knew I wanted to use the Cuttlebug fall leaves die cuts, and you know how I love my glitter, so I combined the two to have the best of both worlds. :)

Close-up of the card. I embossed the leaves with the D'vine Swirl embossing folder and then created my own glitter glue using an Elmer's glue pen and the appropriate color glitter (yellow with yellow leaves, orange with orange, etc.)

Here are the other five cards I made for the fall swap. 

The second part of the swap was the Halloween group. I have only made a few Halloween cards since I've started paper crafting, but so far I haven't been pleased with ANY of the Halloween cards I've created. These turned out all right.

The one aspect I absolutely love about this card is the polka dot paper! I love polka dots and think the Halloween colors look so cute together. :) I handmade the ghosts and gave them googly eyes to liven them up a bit, and also embossed the green paper with polka dots and used my iRock to apply the gems in the corners of the card.

Close-up of the chipboard glittered letters. I painted each with acrylic paint and then sprinkled glitter on them before they dried so that I wouldn't have to go back and apply glue in order for the glitter to stick.

The seven Halloween cards I made for the swap.

Inside of the card. I felt so bad about leaving it blank! I found the cute jack o' lantern stamp at Michael's in the $1 bin and couldn't pass it up. Unfortunately I didn't have a 'Happy Halloween' stamp, so I hand wrote it and also distresses the bottom of the card with green ink to represent grass. 

I had so much fun making the cards for this swap! I hope to do plenty more in the future. It does get a bit tiring after a while, though, having to make the same card over and over again. I usually use what I call an "assembly line" process and make the same element for each card all at the same time rather than individually making each card. 

How do you go about making multiple cards for a swap? I'd love to hear your strategies and techniques!

Thanks for taking the time to read! :)

Ashley

Card Swap Goodies! :)

I was so excited when I checked the mail today and found card swap goodies inside! This is the first card swap I've participated in so that makes it even more exciting. :) The swap was for the Becky's Sweet Creations DT that I'm a part of, and the swap itself was actually divided into two categories, fall-themed cards and Halloween cards. I made cards for both categories (which I'll post later this week), and here's what I received in return:

Halloween Card Swap

 These were the Halloween swap cards. Aren't they just adorable?! The DT ladies did an awesome job :) I've posted close-ups below so that you can get a better look. 

Close-up

Close-up

Fall Card Swap

These are the cards I received for the fall swap, they're so pretty! I can't stop looking at them :) There's a couple more on the way that unfortunately didn't make it on time, so when I receive those I'll add them to this post :)

On a side note, weekly challenges open to all bloggers begin next week on November 1st! The first challenge will be sponsored by Ready, Set, Create! and they will be offering a free one-year subscription to their e-zine to the winner! The top 3 will also receive a prize button :) We hope you'll join us!

Thanks for reading! :)

Ashley