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