October Afternoon

Monday Challenge-Scraplift yourself....

Scraplifting yourself is just the beginning of this challenge. Becky here today, with a multi-faceted challenge. Every year in January, I challenge myself to create a layout and then duplicate it for each of our grandchildren. You can interpret this as you wish...I would suggest a couple of ideas. Maybe you could recreate layouts for each of your children, or perhaps you have a great photo (or more than one) of a group of friends or family members who you could create a page for. This year we added two new grandsons, so last year I made 8 layouts based on one design and this year, I made ten! 

The second aspect of this challenge is to convey something across the board. Something that is important to you. Something you can communicate in a page. 

And the third aspect is to use past collections and scraps. I still adore many of the past October Afternoon collections and wanted to use them and not just hoard them : ) 

Take any part of this challenge and make it your own. Spin it, turn it, interpret it as you like! It's just a starting point. I've enjoyed challenging myself to do this for the past several years and there is something extremely gratifying and freeing to me about it year after year. 

This year, I assembled all of my photos and had a design in mind before I started. Once I began, it went very quickly. This is not my usual creative process. I normally have a mindset of doing something very fresh and of masterpiece quality! But for this challenge, I allow myself freedom. No pressure to create something completely fresh or new, no pressure to make it just right. It's more an exercise in creating and conveying a sentiment. 

On a sidenote, I make a lot of pages for my grandchildren. My goal is not to make albums that document their lives. They have parents who can document their lives if they choose. My reason for creating pages about them is to document my feelings for them and my memories about them from my perspective. I keep a book (or more) for each child that they will be able to take someday if they want. Right now, it's fun for me to do. A creative outlet.

So here are the ten layouts based on one design:

I don't know if I've ever made ten layouts in a day and a half before! But using this process really did work. If I were going to a crop, I think this would be a fun approach. 

Wilna joined me in this challenge and I asked her to interpret it as she liked...and I like how she chose to do it! She went back and found a layout she had made in 2005-

From this layout, she created this beauty-

I think it's great! kind...smart...important. LOVE. 

So please take up this challenge, any part or all of it and share with us what you make! Please post your take on the OA Flickr group! 

Thanks!

Monday Challenge: Using Your Not-Quite-What-You-Expected Photos

Happy Monday! Stacey here, bringing you a new challenge for this week.Use a photo (or a pile of them!) that didn't turn out right. It could be blurry, too dark, really light, or have something weird in the background. Or maybe your child got ahold of the camera and took pictures of things from his perspective. (This happened to me once, and I had a whole lot of pictures of dolls, stuffed animals, and feet - and this was before I had a digital camera, so they were on real film and I paid to have them developed!)

The inspiration for my challenge is a photo of my daughter that I had printed in 8X10 size for the grandparents for Christmas (scroll down - there's a lot of white sky at the top of the photo):

Since it is a digital photo, I had to pay close attention to the cropping when I sent it to Sam's Club for printing. I printed about 40 photos that day and digitally cropped them all - except for this one! In the layout below, you'll see what happened. I still LIKE the photo, but it's not what I was looking for (I needed more than her head for the framed gift photos). As soon as I saw the mistake I'd made, I knew I could use it for a scrapbook page...I love white space on photos, and this one has an abundance of white space!

The title on this is inspired by a sign I found on Pinterest. The big alphas are hand cut - I just eyeballed the letters. It's been a while since I cut anything out freehand like that, and I like how they turned out for this one! I used several October Afternoon collections - even some older ones like Night Light and Cherry Hill!

Here's a closer shot, just for fun:

When I told Jill Sprott my challenge theme, she said she knew just what pictures she wanted to use! She said she had some that turned out blurry, but she still wanted to use them. Here's the layout she did - I love how she cropped and edited the photos a little so that the blurriness isn't so obvious. Here's what she said:

"Taking photos of my husband is always a challenge, but recently, I was able to hold him hostage for a minute outdoors.  That didn't stop him from clowning around the whole time, though, resulting in a lot of blurry photos.  Still, I found myself smiling as I went through the photos, and knew that they would be perfect for this challenge.  How do we judge what is a "usable" photo anyway?  A little blur is inevitable when you're trying to capture life as it happens, after all.  

One way to make blurry photos a little easier to work with is to make them smaller, which is what I did on this layout.  It also helps to make the photo black and white, as I did with one of the photos.  This way the expression on my husband's face becomes the emphasis, and the fact that most everything else is out of focus becomes inconsequential.   

Imperfect photos can share space perfectly with other elements.  On this page, I pulled together lots of blues, greens, and neutrals from various lines, including Rocket Age, Sidewalks, and Farmhouse.  I had so much fun layering and embellishing the patterned rectangles and journaling cards."

I really hope you enjoy this challenge!

Monday Challenge: 5+ Photos

Happy Halloween!  Roree here, and I have a challenge for you today. 

Now a lot of you know me as a card maker.  Cards are my favorite things to create, and they are what I am most comfortable creating.  I do layouts, mini albums, and altered project too, but not nearly as much.  When I was thinking about what kind of challenge to post, I really thought about what would be challenging to me.  The first thing that came to mind was layouts.  While I do like to take photos, I am not great about doing it.  I take a couple here and there, but for the most part I always forget to take my camera with me wherever I go.  I never seem to have enough photos to put together a story on my pages, so I stick to one or two photo layouts.  Maybe three photos if I am lucky. 

So with that in mind, my challenge for you today is to create a layout with 5 or more photos.   For some of you this may not be as much of a challenge so for you, try and get more on a layout than you have ever done before.  Because it really is about challenging yourself, isn't it?  

Here is the layout I created for this challenge:

I really had to dig through my photos to find a day that I took a lot of pictures.  Luckily, I found a day that fit in with a fall/pumpkin theme in honor of Halloween.

I kept my design simple to really focus on the photos.  (I think this is the most photos I have ever used on one page.  LOL)  I love the Print Multiple Photos feature on Photoshop Elements.  It prints all of my photos at one time, and has multiple sizes to choose from.  I printed out all of my photos in two sizes, and then mixed and matched them. 

And I created some fun, little pumpkins to spruce up my title and play on the theme.

 

Collections used:  5 & Dime, Rocket Age, Campfire, Farm Fresh, Fly a Kite

Lexi played along with my challenge this week.  Here is what she came up with and what she had to say about the challenge:

"We just came back from our first true family vacation and, as you can image, took LOTS of photos. I am actually embarrassed to say how many, but I am a scrapbooker so you KNOW it was a lot ;) I knew Roree had the 5+ challenge coming up and it was a perfect way to scrap several of the photos I had just taken. These are pics are of the boys seeing the ocean for the first time. I printed them all out at 2.5x3.5" and added a little bit of a white cardstock mat. I added the bit of journaling with the title on the tag, which left me room to play with some paint, ink, and lots of patterns, without it feeling too crazy.

Collections used:  Sidewalks, Farmhouse, Sasparilla, Rocket Age and Seaside

So are you up for the challenge?  If so, make sure to upload your finished layout to the OA Flicker Gallery.  We love to see what you all create using OA products!

Hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween!  Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday Tutorial: Easy Layouts With 8 X 8 Paper Pads

Hi everyone! Vivian here with today's Tuesday Tutorial. Today we're going to look at a quick and easy way to add oomph to your layouts with 8 X 8 paper pads.

I think one of the most overlooked October Afternoon products is the 8 X 8 paper pads. Sure, the patterns are the same as the 12 X 12 patterned paper sheets, but...and this is the key here...the patterns are on a smaller scale. The 8 X 8 papers are not just an 8 X 8 slice of a 12 X 12 paper, but are the 12 X 12 pattern reduced to 8 X 8. I've found that those smaller-scale patterns open up a new world of design opportunities.

One of my favorite ways to use the 8 X 8 papers is to just tear out a whole sheet from the paper pad, glue it to the center of a 12 X 12 sheet of patterned paper or cardstock, and use it as a canvas within a canvas. Because the 8 X 8 papers have small-scale patterns, they can be used as a background canvas more easily than their 12 X 12 counterparts, as a smaller-scale pattern is less likely to compete with other page elements.

The layout I created for today's tutorial makes use of the Sidewalks line (with a flashcard from the 5 & Dime Miscellany thrown in there). The small-scale text-print paper is from the 8 X 8 Sidewalks paper pad, and is set against a larger-scale 12 X 12 patterned paper, also from the Sidewalks collection. Using the two patterned papers already made for an interesting layout, so it was quick to finish out my design with Miscellany, Flower Sack bits and pieces, and a label sticker cut in half.

I will leave you with two oldies but goodies, layouts I've done previously that use this same technique of a sheet from an 8 X 8 paper pad on a larger 12 X 12 canvas. The first showcases the Boarding Pass collection and the second showcases the 5 & Dime Collection.

If you try this design technique, please post your layout to our October Afternoon Flickr pool, as we'd love to see what you create!

Monday Challenge: Mix and Match

Happy Monday! Vivian here with this week’s Monday challenge. Today we’re keeping it simple with a challenge that asks you to create something using three or more October Afternoon product lines. If you haven’t already noticed, one of the great features of October Afternoon products is that the colors coordinate across lines, making it easy to mix and match products with success.

Becky played along with the challenge this week and came up with a fantastic and fun layout that combines products from several different lines, including Sidewalks, 5 & Dime, Modern Homemaker, Fly a Kite, and Thrift Shop. Note how the yellows, pinks, and aquas combine across the paper lines.

After declaring this a simple challenge I went in a more challenging direction, as I decided to see whether I could use something from every October Afternoon line ever created, from County Fair (the first October Afternoon line ever) through to Sidewalks (in stores now). It was hard, but I did it! Note how the greens, reds, yellows, oranges, and aquas combine across lines and how the alphas coordinate.

I started with a strip of paper from County Fair (the aqua at the bottom) and then cut ¾” wide strips of patterned paper, choosing one paper from each line and gluing the strips to a 12” wide scrap of cardstock to form my own striped paper. I cut the striped paper in half once I was done and used a strip both above and below my photos. Product lines not represented in patterned paper include Schoolhouse (scalloped border sticker), Modern Homemaker (apple punched from patterned paper), Boarding Pass (taller letter stickers), 5 & Dime (Red Wagon sprINKler), Rocket Age (Comet Tail sprINKler), and Sidewalks (label sticker).

If you are an October Afternoon blog reader but don’t visit the website, I encourage you to check out the products section. You can click on each line to look at thumbnails of each product and can click on those thumbnails to get a closer look at products, including the A and B sides of the patterned papers. I’ll let you in on a little secret – I use this section of the website often to help plan my projects. It’s quicker and easier (and less messy!) than pulling out all my papers and embellishments, especially when I’m looking for certain colors, patterns, types of stickers, etc.

Hope you’ll participate in this simple (or not so simple, depending upon how you interpret it!) challenge that’s also a good stash-buster. If you do participate, please link up your work in our October Afternoon Flickr gallery so we can see your creations!

Happy mixing and matching!

Our Last Inspirational Design Idea from our Guest Designer Michiyo Nobeno (aka poki)

When you wish upon a star.

What a great layout. Someone loves Rocket Age! And doesn't she make it look great. I love the added touch of the stars made out of patterned paper and the edges sewn. I just love this layout.

 Now before she goes....

One last project, a beautiful card.

Look at this super cute card from Poki. Look how she used the mini market stickers. I love how she put them around the circles. And an added touch is the sewing along the lines of the paper.

It is sad that today is last day for our guest designer Poki. She has been a great guest designer! Please help me thank her for her insiprations.

More Inspirational Design Ideas from our Guest Designer Michiyo Nobeno (aka poki)

Good Morning! Poki here to show you a fun layout that uses a number of elements including SPRINKLERS !

I cut out white card stock in varied size circles and then sprayed them with 6 different colors of Sprinklers. Because I love every color,  I thought if I had all the colors together, they might look like a rainbow. The white amongst all the colors somehow softens the rainbow colors.

OA Sprinklers are simply so adorable!! I used Circus Peanuts which has the stripes as a background paper and also some other scraps of paper and Rub-ons.

I machine stitched them along the stripe so that they blended in with the background paper.

The fun bubbles are represented with cut-out circles.

__________________*******************__________________

Doesn't she do a wonderful job of layering! As always super cute! Way to go Poki!!!!

Wednesday Post: Flickr Feature

I was taking a look at all of the new and fun things that people have been creating with October Afternoon and posting on Flickr. I came across a few wonderful projects posted by Jessy  Christopher from Malaysia. Look at some of the great cards she has created using pieces from wonderful October Afternoon lines.

Aren't those just great! Please stop back tomorrow and Join along with the Sketch challenge!

More Inspirational Design Ideas from Michiyo Nobeno (aka poki)

October Afternoon is delighted to once again showcase Michiyo Nobeno's (aka poki) beautiful design work. Poki, resides in Japan where she is a house wife, mother of two young children and an avid Scrapbook Designer. 

As parents everywhere know, our children are amazing subjects for creative inspiration. Poki has taken the paper and embellishments from our 5 & Dime collection and has created a stunning design capturing a one of those all-too-brief childhood moments. Her design not only freeze-frames a candid moment, but also conveys an intimate story through the strategic use of layered embellishments and an A+ composition.

Poki's takes us on a visual journey through the use of strategic composition and layering.  Starting from the top-left corner of the piece, she captures our eye with a simple floral rub-on. Then, a selection of layered embellishments draws our eye down to the mid section of the layout.  This is the focal point of the composition, which showcases a photo of her child.  Poki then guides our eyes back in a sweep up the right side of the design with strategically-placed bakers twine, buttons and other embellishments.

A close up on how Poki uses layering and embellishments to convey the moment and add depth to her design.

Another close up showing Poki's use of layered embellishments to give interest to the bottom right portion of the design. She holds back in this area, so as not to overwhelm the composition, allowing for the remainder of the design to be the primary focus.

"Domo Arigato" to Poki for letting us showcase her work!

 

 

Tutorial: Design Principles

Hi! It's Wilna here with today's tutorial on some design principles.  Now, we all know the basics more or less but i want to talk about repetition in scrapbook design today. Repetition is one of the most important design principles along with colour, line, shape, texture etc. What makes repetition so appealing in scrapbook design is because of the fixed size in which we mostly scrapbook. (For me it's 12"x12").  Using repetition in variations is not only interesting, but necessary to avoid monotony. When Variation is introduced (using the same shape or colour even) it intrigues the eye and create some fun and exciting possibilities. The individuality of each element will be considered. But most importantly, the whole will still be more then the sum of the parts… and is that not our ultimate goal when creating a scrapbook page? We don't want someone to say… "wow, that's an awesome square of patterned paper…" but rather " wow, that's a beautiful page!".

So for this tutorial on repetition, i created this page using squares. Believe it or not, but in this single page, there are 26 actual squares and another few visible squares. See how the title and journaling creates a visual square within itself.
 
 
 
On a different note, i got an iPhone this week and it has the most amazing camera. So the page is about Chase Jarvis' philosophy that the best camera is the one you have with you. Let's use them much more!! happy summer!

love and a kiss
wilna furstenberg