October Afternoon

Monday Challenge - A Mix of Photos.

Are you all counting down?  It's the last full week before Christmas.  I don't know about you, but I'll be wrapping gifts and paying close attention to my to-do list this week!

Over here at October Afternoon we've teamed up with Glue Arts this week.  So, be sure to take some time for yourself this busy holiday season... grab a cup of hot chocolate and enjoy what we have for you here on the blog.  :)

I'm (Marcy) up first and I have a challenge for you.  Earlier Amy issued a black and white photo challenge.  I wanted to see if we could take it a step farther and mix black and white photos with color photos.

I dug out Holiday Style and got to work.  

I decided to work with photos of my oldest boy building a snowman with the muddy, leafy snow from a first snowfall.

 

Clearly I'm still enjoying banners!  ;)  I'm madly in love with the chipboard buttons.  Also, when I want to use stickers on a banner I stick them to my jeans and pull them off a few times to get rid of the stickiness.

I tossed this challenge over to Jill and this is what she came up with.

I just adore all the handwriting samples!  Here's what Jill had to say.

"Looking at these photos of myself at sixteen prompted me to go back through the journals I kept as a teenager.  They are stuffed with memorabilia, including letters and old calendar pages. I incorporated a few of those items here on the page.  To enhance the page's theme, I worked in bits and pieces from the Farmhouse line Miscellany, journaling cards, and letter and label stickers. The page itself uses Farmhouse along with some Boarding Pass and Sidewalks -- they actually coordinate really well!  I also used some OA fabric behind the photos."

So there you have it.  I can't remember the last time I mixed color photos with black and whites! If you're up for the challenge please post your layout in our gallery and link to it in the comment section!  We'd love to see what you do.  :)

 

Glue Arts is offering up a wonderful prize package if you go and visit their blog...

We'd like to give you a bit of Holiday Style too! Along with our GlueArts products! Just post a comment today...we really do enjoy hearing from you...and we'll enter you to win a collection kit from October Afternoon's NEW Holiday Style along with a GlueArts Embellishment Kit!!! ( Includes (1) Roll Ribbon Adhesive, (1) Roll Extreme Adhesive Squares, (10) Sheets Vellum Adhesive, (1) Sheet U CUT IT Foam, (16) Squares Raisen's, and (300) Micro Adhesive Squares.) We'll select one random winner and post their name on Christmas Eve!!

We saved the best for last

Santa Sack #5.  Here it is!  The last Santa Sack for 2011!

Are you ready for a GREAT deal?  This is the perfect opportunity for you to get your hands on October Afternoon products at a deeply discounted price.  What a great time to stock up and save a bundle!  Here are the details...each box will contain over $100.00 retail value, all for $39.99 plus shipping!!

SERIOUSLY! Look at all that goodness!

Can you believe it?  It is the last one of the year.  These boxes have been hand-picked by our designers here at October Afternoon, and are full to the brim with pattern paper, stickers, Chip-n-Stick, embellishments, and more!  The best part is that there will be a sprinkling of products from our newest lines in every single box!  Once you place your order ... your box will ship the following business day! All sales are final.

SPECIAL Announcement!
In the month of December, for every Santa Sack you buy, your name will be put into a drawing for the ULTIMATE SANTA SACK.  It will have over $200.00 worth of product.  And it will be shipped BEFORE Christmas!

 

Shipping and Handling will be as follows— flat rate per Santa Sack.
Continental USA/APO-$10.00
Hawaii/Alaska-$15.00
Canada-$18.00
and all other Countries $35.00

 

SOLD OUT!

 

 

 

 

If you are having trouble or need to ask a question please mail: [email protected].  We will be happy to assist you.

Spouse winners

Boy did we put ourselves in a pickle.  The nominations were amazing.  We never thought that we'd get such a response.  All of us in the office read through them and chose our top contendors, then we put those names in a hat and drew four winners.

The winners are:

• I am writing for my wife Angie. She loves October Afternoon. Not only the company but October is her favorite time of the year. She has had a very hard year losing her mother and them her brother 2 months later, and I lost my job in October. She is the rock that hold us together and Scrapbooking is what keeps her sane. She would love a Santa Sack and I would love it too as our Christmas will be small this year! Thanks

• OK, I would really love for my wife to win this Santa Sack as she loves October Afternoon, especially your new Christmas collection. She had it ready to buy and I told her to wait, now she is having a hard time finding 1 of everything. Winning this sack would make everything all better for her [seriously for me]. This would make her Christmas. Of course I will never tell her to wait again. Never. She scraps for all our grandchildren, all 5 of them, and your product in her view makes every page the best page. Thank you.

• Not trying to turn it into a sob story, but I lost my job about a month ago (not the best time of year to be put in the situation!). My wife is a paper crafter and it is her passion to create. Since I lost my job, she has been going the extra mile to sell her crafts in her etsy shop to make a little extra $ to help out. It would be nice to win a little something for her for Christmas since the gifts I am getting her are things that she absolutely NEEDS. She might say that she needs more paper, but we all know that buying more paper isn't a life or death situation! lol Thanks for the chance to win a little gift for my wife!

• Well if there is anyone that deserves a free Santa sack it is my wife Eva. I am in the army and currently deployed to Iraq, but unlike the rest will be staying until the summer. So as the rest of the soldiers come home, my wife has to be one of the “lucky” few who will not have her husband by her side over the holidays. She is an awesome mother and a wonderful wife. She is deserving of the Santa sack due to her sacrifices and the support she gives her deployed Hubby! Thanks!

Thank you all who entered. It was truly heart warming to read them.

I will be emailing the winners (so the spouses don't know).

more december daily

Happy Friday everyone! It's Heather again with another guest designer post. Last week I shared some pages from the daily December mini book and this week I have a few other things to share about this project...

I mentioned that I used a Santa's Toy Shop Golden Book for my book base. Here's a look at what I did for the cover. I wanted to keep the charm of the book, yet still put my mark on the cover as to what this mini book contains.

On the bottom right corner I assembled a stamped year and some cardstock stickers in the Holiday line onto a die cut from the red polka dot patterned paper. 

This is my opening spread for the book. I didn't include any pictures (at this point anyway), but enough information to let someone know what this book is all about.

Instead of covering the inside cover of the original book, I left it as is and added this little assemblage of cardstock stickers and a Santa flashcard from the Miscellany accessories.

I had to make a snowflake out of the pipe cleaners in the Miscellany accessories and I love the vintage look! I also played around with some Paper Doily sprinklers that I picked up a few weekends ago and sprayed the mist over a wooded snowflake that I had in my Christmas supplies. A few red snowflake rub-ons, journaling, a December calendar from the Journal Cards set, and more cardstock stickers finish this page off.

It's fun to see this little book come together. I am a little behind in adding pictures, but that will happen. The important thing for me is to enjoy the process with creating the pages and capturing the memories.

See you next week!

December journal Sketch.

Hello! Wilna here! I absolutely adore the month of December! Coming from sunny South Africa to live in Canada, we now have a white Christmas every year which makes it more magical every year! I have been doing Ali Edwards' December Daily for the past 4 years and love it so. So for today's sketch, I am doing a layout that will work with your demeber daily (and any other aspect ratio). There is still one Afrikaans Magazine that I love and read every month on Zinio called Sarie. It's a gorgeously designed magazine and the sketch for today comes straight from it's pages:

 

 

So, translating this sketch to my December Daily album:

The lovely Becky played along and this is what she did. I mean... seriously? She is a.m.a.z.i.n.g. the end.

Merry Christmas!

love and a kiss

 

Santa Sack #5 (the LAST one) Sneak Peek

SERIOUSLY! Look at all that goodness!

What can you see?

We can play I SPY!

It will go on sale Friday The 16th at 11:00 a.m. CST

A FREE Santa Sack you say?

YES!

Are you hard to buy for? Does your spouse need some help?

We're here to help.  How do I win the Santa Sack you ask?  Well it is fairly easy....

Here's how:

You need to have your spouse write us and let us know why YOU deserve a Santa Sack.  It is just that easy.  We then will read them all and decide who we deem most deserving of a Santa Sack. Now it HAS to be your spouse/significant other writing us.  If you are sans significant other, you can have a friend enter you. As long as you are not nominating yourself.  You can have them do it here on the Blog or on our Facebook Page.  You will have 2 days to submit your essay of 100 words or less.  We will decide on the winner on Friday before the very last Santa Sack goes on sale (11:00 a.m. CST).

Good Luck!

Tuesday Tutorial: Holiday Cards in a Snap

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Vivian here with this week’s tutorial. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a million balls in the air right now. Any regular day finds me trying to squeeze it all in and when December hits the added holiday events and obligations make squeezing it all in next to impossible. I find I’m always behind in December!

I decided this year to come up with a couple of quick holiday card designs that I can turn to in a pinch (like when it’s fifteen minutes before we have to leave for a holiday event or 10:00 at night before the last day of school in December and I haven’t put anything together for my kids’ teachers or…you get the idea).

I created Card #1 for Hanukkah using the Farmhouse line, but this design could be easily replicated for Christmas or New Year’s or any other holiday by swapping out the papers and the greeting:

Happy Hanukkah Card How-to:

1. Cut a 3.75” X 5” piece of cream cardstock.
2. Print greeting (or write greeting) on a Little Flyer or scrap of patterned paper. (If I had made this as a Christmas card I could have just grabbed a pre-printed greeting from one of the following Holiday Style products: Word Stickers, Little Flyers, or the Flower Sack.)
3. Adhere greeting to left edge of cream cardstock about 1/2" up from the bottom.
4. Machine stitch around the cream rectangle twice – once with a (relatively) straight line and once with a wavy line. I can stitch a card like this in a minute or two because I don’t care how messy it is. This detail can also be added with a pen if you don’t sew or if you want to make this step even quicker.
5. Cut a 5.5” X 8.5” piece of black cardstock and fold it in half to form the card base.
6. Adhere stitched cream cardstock rectangle to card base.
7. Punch three circles from patterned paper.
8. (Optional): Adhere punched circles to metal-rimmed tags. (I happened to have some tags lying around and thought this added a bit of fun holiday sparkle to the card.)
9. Adhere circles to card.

Card #2 was created for Christmas using Holiday Style, but this design can also be easily adapted by forming a different shape with buttons (a heart, a star, etc.):

Noel Card How–to:

1. Cut a 3.75” X 5” piece of black cardstock.
2. Adhere 10 small buttons to the black cardstock to form a tree.
3. Adhere a greeting (here I used a Flower Sack element but you could also use a sticker or a greeting printed on patterned paper or cardstock) below the button tree.
4. Tie baker’s twine from the Wrap Pack around the bottom of the card and trim ends.
5. Cut a 5.5 X 8.5” piece of cardstock and fold in half to form a card base.
6. Cut a 4.25” X 5.5” piece of patterned paper.
7. Adhere patterned paper to card base.
8. Using dimensional adhesive (pop dots, foam squares, etc.), adhere black cardstock to center of patterned paper on card.

Hope these card designs prove helpful to you, whether you're crunched for time or not! If you create cards based on these designs, please post them to our October Afternoon Flickr pool - we'd love to see your work!

Monday challenge: Add a Bag!

Is it Monday again already?! Welcome to another Monday Challenge--Holiday version ;) Lexi here with you today and the idea for this week came to mind as I was looking at all the pretty packaging this time of year. While noticing some fun designs on bags from stores (think Trader Joe's, Starbucks, etc.) I thought...why not a bag challenge? That's right--let's add some kind of bag to our projects!
Dani joined me for the challenge and here are her creations, which are nothing short of beautiful.

She created these sweet tags using Very Merry stamps, glassine bags and Holiday Style. The glassine bags give off the perfect frosty look for this time of year. Who wouldn't love to receive this package Christmas morning? 

 I played around with a few bag ideas myself...

Although this isn't terribly holiday-ish, I loved how that striped brown paper bag looked with bits from Farmhouse, Sasparilla & Sidewalks collections. It almost looks like the leaves are falling out of it. I used my vintgae typewriter to add the journaling before gluing it down. 

The Farmhouse tin pin helped highlight his age on the number strip, while the tickets from the Sidewalks miscellany make a perfect border. 

This is a page from a current December mini I am making, in which the background is a glassine bag. I just cut it down in size to fit the book. Because the picture was about the night we decorated our tree I filled it with sequins and punched snowflakes before sewing it shut. The chipboard tree is from the Holiday Style miscellany pack and was sprayed with Boarding Pass sprinkler. 

Can you see the bag part of the project here? 

Yep, it's from a Starbucks bag last year that I saved. The white text on the brown bag was perfect for a card. I simply trimmed it down to size, sprayed on some Paper Doily sprinkler and sewed it down before layering on Holiday Style goodies. 

So, how about you . Have you seen any cool bags this year? Why not save one and give this challenge a try? Load them up in the October Afternoon Flickr gallery so we can admire them! Enjoy your holiday season and have a merry day!

-Lexi

Santa Sack #4.  This is the second-to-last Santa Sack.  The last one will be sold next week, same time, same place.

Are you ready for a GREAT deal?  This is the perfect opportunity for you to get your hands on October Afternoon products at a deeply discounted price.  What a great time to stock up and save a bundle!  Here are the details...each box will contain over $100.00 retail value, all for $39.99 plus shipping!!

Can you believe it?  What a great deal!  These boxes have been hand-picked by our designers here at October Afternoon, and are full to the brim with pattern paper, stickers, Chip-n-Stick, embellishments, and several alphabets!  The best part is that there will be a sprinkling of products from our newest lines in every single box!  Once you place your order ... your box will ship the following business day!  We are going to be doing this on upcoming Fridays with a different box each week! All sales are final.

SPECIAL Announcement!
For the month of December for every Santa Sack you buy, your name will be put into a drawing for the ULTIMATE SANTA SACK.  It will have over $200.00 worth of product.  And it will be shipped BEFORE Christmas!

 

Shipping and Handling will be as follows— flat rate per Santa Sack.
Continental USA/APO-$10.00
Hawaii/Alaska-$15.00
Canada-$18.00
and all other Countries $35.00

 

SOLD OUT!

 

 

 

 

If you are having trouble or need to ask a question please mail: [email protected].  We will be happy to assist you.