October Afternoon

One Sketch, Two Ways

Sometimes the greatest and most unexpected surprises are found in the little things, the details that we might otherwise overlook.  On a layout, even the tiniest bits and pieces can make a significant impact.  Today we feature a sketch that is bound to make you take a second look at the nuances of the patterns and accents that can be found in October Afternoon’s collections. 

Keeping in mind that this is just a sketch, and that you can take this in any direction that you would like, this sketch welcomes an abundance of details, multiple photos, and room for lots of journaling. The blocks need not be interpreted literally as rectangles, but rather, as spaces where you might create “homes” for embellishments and photos. It actually takes its inspiration from a wall full of framed photos and artwork, as seen in a movie set that many of you might recognize.  I love the idea of frame upon frame, little pieces coming together to make a grand statement.  

Speaking of grand statements, how amazing is Roree Rumph’s interpretation of the sketch?
 
Roree hand-picked an assortment of bright, bold, and colorful accents from the Schoolhouse, Campfire, Modern Homemaker, and 5 & Dime collections to create a page that is true to its sentiment.  This makes ME happy just looking at it!
 
Among the details are stitched buttons, tin pins, and alphabet and label stickers (some of which are raised with adhesive dots to give them an extra boost). 
 
Roree adapted the journaling area in the sketch to accommodate a photo (a really-quite-lovely self-portrait) and her title block, which makes brilliant use of the pennants from the 5 & Dime Shape Stickers sheet.
 
Roree even found a way to work in some stamping action, using the star stamps from the 5 & Dime Stamp Set to create these little beauties. 

Like Roree’s layout, my own interpretation of the sketch hones in on the details, and celebrates them! 

The colorful assemblage of bits and pieces comes together in the name of all that is delicious and fattening.  Every detail, culled from the 5 & Dime and Modern Homemaker collections, connects in some way to the one dozen malasadas from Leonard’s Bakery that I purchased (and inhaled) on Malasada Day a few weeks ago.
Since Leonard’s Bakery has been around since the 1950s, the retro-cool accents and patterns were right at home on this page.  The number 12 appears often in this layout, as I wanted to emphasize the idea of a dozen.  The snippet of a recipe that you see above is from the “Snickerdoodles” paper in the Modern Homemaker line; I was delighted to find that it contained some of the ingredients that actually go into malasada dough. 

One of my favorite aspects of “mining” papers for striking and meaningful details is helping each fragment, each piece, to find its home.  This whisk?  The word strip?  The square that reads “Something For All in Your Family”? Yet another 12?  It all just clicks.
I find it both hilarious and affirming that both Roree and I included banners on our layouts and in our titles, and that where she put her rectangular photo, I added a rectangular journaling block.  This wasn’t in the sketch, but our minds took us both there for some reason.  

Now I’m curious to see where the sketch will take you, and what treasures you’ll find in your October Afternoon stash when you take a closer look.  Be sure to share your layouts (or projects or cards riffing on the sketch in some way) in our Flickr gallery.  I’ll be on the lookout! 

Jill

Marcy Penner and Reader Spotlight

We decided we should round out the October Afternoon design team with a twelth member and when we saw her fun, whimsicle style, we knew Marcy Penner would be the perfect addition!  So, today we introduce you to Marcy!
 
My name is Marcy Penner.  I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am to be a tiny part of October Afternoon!  I've loved this company from the very beginning and you'd be hard-pressed to find many of my layouts that don't have something from this company on them!

I'm a pretty simple girl.  I married my high school sweetheart and we have three kidlets.  For the last 11 years we've been living on the family farm and renovating a 120 year old farmhouse in Canada.  Yes.  Still renovating!  ;)  Back in the day I earned my Bachelor of Education degree, but an artistic life has always been calling my name.  I'm always busy doing something creative... photography, scrapbooking, decorating... you name it!  I love that scrapbooking combines so many of my hobbies into one!  It's the perfect fit.

Thanks for the opportunity to inspire you all and I can't wait to see what you guys all share as well.

"Jenga" by Marcy Penner
 
 

On another note, we are putting together many fun new features for Wednesdays and today we want to introduce you to Reader Spotlight.  We just love when our blog readers share with us all the fun they have been up to with our product and we want to share it with you too!

We were completely inspired by these projects from Kim Jeffress, and we hope you will be as well. 
 
Kim really rocked the Campfire line.  That little wild card banner in the corner is so clever!
 
This "Beach Bum" layout is adorable.  What a cute photo!
 
Wild cards are always the perfect touch for cardmaking.

Kim says, "I created these projects as part of my Design team pack from Handmade with Suzanne an online shop here in Australia. OA is definitily my favourite manufacturor, I love how everything coordinates perfectly!!! Especially for my little boy pages as thats what I mainly scrap...my fav collection is the upcoming rocket age collection, I am hanging out for it to hit the shops here in Australia. My four year old is mad about anything SPACE, I have about 8 sets of photos just waiting for this collection to arrive. Thanks for this chance to be sharing some of my OA creations."

Check out Kim's blog here to see many more beautiful projects featuring October Afternoon.

Now we want to ask YOU...what kinds of features would you like to see on Wednesdays?

Tuesday Tutorial: Paper Flowers

 
Hi everyone!! It's Amy here today, and I'm so excited to be bringing you the very first installment of October Afternoon's new series :: Tuesday Tutorials! Each Tuesday the Design Team will bring you a fresh, fun tutorial specially designed for your favorite October Afternoon projects. Today I'm going to show you how to create super easy flowers out of something we all have, scraps and a circle punch, and adhesive!
 
I wanted to show you that there are many options with these flowers, so I created 3 different sizes. So for which ever sized circle punch you have, you can create these fun, easy flowers for any of your paper crafting projects!
 
To achieve this I used 3 different sized circle cutters to create 3 different sized flowers. Today I'll be using my 1.5" circle punch to demonstrate. On my layout above my 2" circle cutter resulted in a 4" flower, my 1.5" circle cutter resulted in a 3" flower and my 1" circle cutter resulted in a 2" flower.
 
First, start out by punching out 7 circles, 6 for the petals and one for the adhesive. (Note, on some of my flowers I found that using 8 petals worked best, but for this size 6 seems to work out just right.)
 
Next we are going to do our folding. The object is to create a "V" shape from your circle. Don't worry about being perfect, you just want to make sure that you aren't overlapping at the tip of your "V" or your petal may become to small, and you'll need to add more.
 
Repeat this same folding technique on all 6 circles. I like swap sides of the patterned paper, it varies the pattern and creates a fun whimsical feel. But you can also keep all the paper the same direction for all the petals, it's up to you!
 
Next up, you're going to cover your last punched circle in a sticky adhesive. This is especially important if you don't plan on sewing your flower together or stapling the center. I use an ATG glue gun, and that has very tacky glue, so that works fine.
 
When you're done adhering, this is what your flower will look like. Now, you can totally wrap up this project here, simply by covering the center with a button or other embellishment, or you can take it one step further, which I often do, by stitching around the perimeter of your flower.
 
I really like a messy, whimsical look to my freeform stitching, so there really isn't a right or wrong way to do this. I just follow the curve of the circle several time, until I think it's done.
 
When you're done stitching, it will look something like this. Now, to give your flower dimension. Simply stick your finger inside each petal and slightly squish the sides together. Be careful not to squish too hard as to fold the back piece, but just enough to add a roundness to each petal.
 
In the end it will look like this! Now, this is where I dressed up my flower by distress inking the edges and adding embellishments to the center of my flower.
 
Here you can see, I added cut and punched pieces of patterned paper, as well as buttons and tin caps for the centers of my flowers. Super fun and super easy! Gotta love that! I hope you try this whimsical way to add easy flowers to your cards, layouts or altered paper crafting!

Thanks so much for stopping by October Afternoon today! Have a wonderful day! ;)

Challenge: Throw A Little Vintage On It!

Good Monday morning October Afternoon fans! Lexi here and I am thrilled to be the first blog host of the new design team! Let's get this started and make our Monday a little more happy with a challenge, shall we? 

If you love October Afternoon more than likely you like the hint of vintage that is put into each collection. It totally goes with my flea market finding personality. It is rare for me to come home from a treasure hunting trip without a little something...and most often I am searching for unique (and by unique I also mean cheap!)  items for my craft space. I like to keep these vintage findings in my scrap room not only because it just makes me happy, but also for easy access to throw on a project.

For example:

An old colander on my desk houses my latest finds, which on this day were old workbasket magazines from the 60's and sewing items.
 
Old jelly jars are perfect for corralling old buttons. I do not think I could ever have too many buttons!
 
This vintage mail sorter cabinet has slots to hold old bingo cards and other emphera. What stories it could tell!
 

All of which bring me to my challenge for you today: THROW A LITTLE VINTAGE ON IT!

That's right—let's actually USE some of these goodies we are hoarding! Ok..maybe it's just me doing the hoarding, but you get the idea ;) And it doesn't have to be the star of your layout..maybe it is just a piece of dictionary paper tucked behind a photo or a border punched from an old hymnal.

*I will probably get asked, “what if it isn't archival safe?”  You are right..it probably isn't, but that doesn't bother me. I know there is archival spray for these types of things if it is a concern. My thought is that creating it makes me happy and in 100 years I won't be around to see it anyway :) I see old scrapbooks in thrift stores and am quite sure they didn't bother with making everything that when into it was acid free ;) 

In the layout below it is the photo of my husband's grandpa that is vintage, along with a military button. I used a combination of Seaside, 5 and Dime and Rocket Age here.
 
 

And this “It's the little things” mini has lots of little bits of old, without overwhelming it:

 
 
The bingo card door, milk cap roof and flower trim all came from flea market trips. Inside are pieces of vintage along with the new 5 and Dime and Modern Homemaker collections! I wanted to do this mini to document those daily things I see that in and of themselves might not seem all that significant, but make up the big picture of our lives right now. Because really I know someday I am going to miss 2 little toothbrushes in the sink and lego/robots everywhere...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We have another example by DT member Stacey Kingman. Stacey says: I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I heard that Lexi’s challenge was going to involve using a little vintage! The card I created is centered around an adorable old birthday photo I found on Flickr. I imagine that all of those little girls are wearing at least a little bit of pink, so I used the October Afternoon pink ribbon to make a pleated ribbon swag across the bottom of the photo. In the center, I made a scrunched flower with scalloped circles that I punched from a couple of pages of an old children’s book. The vintage book pages are quite soft and very easy to shape into a pretty flower! The banner is made from Mini Market Alphas that I inked just a little and hand stitched into a little greeting. I finished the inside of the card with a label from the 5 and Dime collection. 
 
 
 

So is your mind already racing with ideas? GOOD! Now go create something and link it up into the October Afternoon Flickr group here! Projects are due by Sunday, April 3. Please put 3/28 challenge in your project title so we know it is for this challenge.  I hear there is a prize involved ;) 

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you feel challenged to dig out some vintage goodies and if you have any questions I would be happy to answer them!
Happy Monday!

Lexi

5 and Dime Winners!

Hello everybody!  Thanks again for all your excitement for our new design team and the fun that is still to come!  We have some awesome things coming up this week that you don't want to miss.  We wish that we could send you all some 5 and Dime goodies, but we had to pick just 3 lucky winners. 

 

 

 
 
Congratulations Helen, Aimee and Larissa!  E-mail me at [email protected] with your contact information and I will get your prizes out to you!

Hope you are all having a fantastic weekend!  See ya tomorrow.

Online Sale Dates . . .

Since the online part of the Warehouse Sale started over the weekend, we will be accepting online ordering through Tuesday -- as long as supplies last!

Warehouse sale comes to YOU!

You asked, we listened!  Many of you have commented that you wish you could shop the OA Warehouse sale, but you live too far away.  Well, we've created a way to bring the OA Warehouse sale to all of our on-line fans!!

Send us your shopping list (see instructions below), and we will send a "personal shopper" with your wish-list over to the warehouse to shop for you.  We will set aside your product purchases and ship them to you starting on Monday!

Product is going fast, so we can't guarantee that you will get everything on your wish-list!

Here's what you need to do to shop the OA Warehouse Sale online.  First, download the Warehouse Sale order form from our website using the following link:

        OA Warehouse Sale Order Form

Then follow the directions below to submit your shopping list via E-mail or FAX.

E-mail Submission:

a) Fill out the PDF order form electronically.  The PDF file will let you type in your order quantities and contact information.  We recommend using the Adobe Acrobat Reader software.

Please note that you can't type in or fill-out the totals using the electronic version.  But don't worry, we will contact you with your total before shipping.

b) Save your changes to the file.

c) E-mail the filled-out PDF file back to us at the following e-mail address:

        [email protected]

FAX Submission:

a) Print out the PDF order form.

b) Write in your order quantities, totals, and contact information.

c) FAX the filled-out order form back to us at the following number:

        952-891-5339 FAX

Next Steps:

Once we receive your order form, you will be in line for our next available personal shopper.  Someone will call or e-mail you (don't forget to provide your contact info) once your shopping basket has been filled for you!

Your order will be shipped via Fed-Ex ground for a simple flat-rate $11.00 charge (domestic orders only). 

The deals are amazing!  Don't miss out!

 

Design Team Introductions - Final Day!

Happy Friday!  Today we are going to wrap up the introductions and next week we will get started with our new blog content and schedule.  I have seen some of what the design team has up their sleeves and you won't want to miss it!

Here is a little more about Wilna and Becky!

 
My name is Wilna Furstenberg. Just give me a minute to scream into a towel - that's how excited I am to be a part of October Afternoon! Right, now that I have that out of my system, let me tell you some of my story. I grew up in South Africa; in 1991 I met and married Jaco Furstenberg who is still my heartbeat.  When we got married, he was second year med school and shortly after that I decided to go to University too (he was having way too much fun) and we both graduated in 1996: he in medicine and me in fine arts. He use to drop me off at class reminding me to have fun drawing pictures. (yes, we are still married) In 1997 we had our first girl, Tia. Even today we wonder what we did to deserve such a sweet child. Of course I tell my husband she takes after me. His response to that remark was not very gentlemanly (which just proves my point). Anyway, in 1999 Kirstin was born. She is the organizer and fashionista in the house. Jana (from our names JAco and wilNA) is our last born. I think if I was not as strong willed as I am, Jana would have her own Credit card and cell phone. She insists daily. I said no.
In 2005 we moved to Canada. I joked about our coming to Canada to all my friends saying: the only reason I am going is to win the scrapbooking hall of fame. And, in 2006, I won Hall of Fame! After that I have just been making pages and enjoying the journey. We live in Saskatchewan: it really gets very cold here (-40 degrees Celsius). Jana learned early on not to lick the fence when it's that cold. In the past 3 years we got two Mini Schnauzers. The boy's name is Mac (just because I love Mac computers - very, very much). The girl is called Abby (after the character in NCIS).
A few more random facts about me: I homeschool our girls. It's one of the best things I ever decided to do...I love it! I am a paper and digital scrapbooker. I actually design digital products (on twopeasinabucket). Jaco and I love to watch Survivor and American idol while eating dark chocolate. My favorite movie is Pride and Prejudice ("And what excellent boiled potatoes. It's been many years since I had such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins should I compliment the cooking?"). I write about my life, faith and art on my heART blog: wilnaf.com.

"More Than Enough" by Wilna Furstenberg

 
 
I’ve always been drawn to paper and photos, so when I was first exposed to scrapbooking, I was hooked. In 2004, life changed and paper crafts became much more than a hobby, it became a daily creative endeavor. Although life has changed yet again, and now photography plays an important role in her life, I still make time to scrapbook and play with paper. Becky has been published in BHG Scrapbooks Etc, Creating Keepsakes, Scrapbook Trends, Memory Makers, Cards, Legacy, Somerset and back in the day, Autumn Leaves Books. Currently, Becky serves on the design teams for Jenni Bowlin, and is honored to be on the October Afternoon Team! 

Becky lives in Fremont, Nebraska with her husband Tom. They have 4 grown, married children and 9 grandchildren. She enjoys photography, paper crafts, flea marketing, reading, lunching with friends and spending Sunday afternoons in the summer around the pool with her whole family.

"Live In The Moment" by Becky Novacek
 
 

Feel free to leave a comment if you want to win some 5 and Dime goodies.  I will draw the winners on Monday.  Have a great weekend, and don't forget to come see us at the October Afternoon Warehouse Sale if you are in the area!

October Afternoon Warehouse Sale

Imagine being able to shop straight off the shelves of the October Afternoon warehouse...at even-better-than-wholesale prices!

We had a great day yesterday, and there are plenty of great items remaining for today through Sunday. 

 

The details:

October Afternoon Warehouse

5708 Upper 147th ST W # 103
Apple Valley, MN  55124

Warehouse entrance: South side of building (in the back), # 103

Hours:

Friday: 10am-6pm
Saturday: 10am-6pm
Sunday: Noon-5pm

Reminders and guidelines:

* Please bring cash or a photo ID and credit card. We're sorry, but we're not able to accept checks.

* We apologize, but young children will not be able to attend. This is a real working warehouse; the items are stacked high on wooden pallets, and although we've done our best, the aisles can be narrow when it's busy. (We're sorry for the inconvenience; several of us are parents of young ones ourselves, and we've been swapping childcare for our "alone time" in the warehouse.)

The goods:

We have patterned paper (available in wrapped packs of 25 sheets--most lines for $4/pack!), stickers, wild cards, rub-ons and more from almost every line prior to the launch of our newest lines at CHA 2011, including Ducks in a Row, Farm Fresh, Very Merry, Good Cheer, Night Light, Report Card, Road Map, and Weathervane (we even have a few mini-albums and Mini Market alphas).

We can't wait to see you there!

Design Team Introductions - Day 4

Isn't it fun getting to know the designers a little bit more?  Roree and Danni are up today.

 

My name is Roree Rumph. I live in Daphne, AL with my husband David, my two daughters, Grace and Harper.  I have been paper crafting for some time now, and it has become such a huge part of my life.  I love making cards and altering things, and on occasion I scrapbook too. I love using a mix of colors and patterns, flowers and buttons are some of my favorite embellishments, and one of my favorite tools is my sewing machine.  My work has been published in magazines such as Cards, Scrapbook Trends, Simply Handmade, and Paper Crafts.

When I am not crafting, you can usually find me hanging out with my family, playing on the computer, shopping for supplies, reading a magazine, or sipping on a white chocolate mocha from Starbucks.  I am so excited to have the opportunity to work with October Afternoon, and I only hope that my work will help inspire you to be as creative as you can be.

"Lucky Girl Card" by Roree Rumph

 
Hello. My name is Danni Reid and I am beyond honored to be returning to the October Afternoon design team! I am so looking forward to all the new and exciting things coming up with OA and the blog, it's going to be amazing. I am a SAHM to 4 babes, 3 boys and 1 girl (yes, she's amazing). My eldest is a junior in high school and my youngest started kindergarten. My hubby is an administrator to 3 schools and I try to support him and his staff anyway possible. (I love to create for his staff, every single employee, so you'll see lots of teacher-ideas too ;) ) We live in N. California, where we are blessed to have the Sierra Nevada Mountains for our backyard. We love to camp, hike, fish, swim, play any/all sports and just be outdoors (3 boys, we NEED to be outdoors....giggle) I began scrapbooking/cardmaking when I received a gift of supplies from my late grandmother, 17 years ago, I haven't purchased a card since. I am thrilled to be taking this journey with the new team and with all of you! so much love, danni.

"5 Months" by Danni Reid










"Hello Card" by Danni Reid




What gorgeous projects!  Roree and Danni, you did such a beautiful job. 

Have you entered to win the 5 and Dime goodies?  Leave a comment and you could be a lucky winner!