October Afternoon

Sign's of summer with Lydia Jackson

Hello OA fans Lydia here with my last post for June, I just wanted to say a quick Thank you to all of you, I have read all of your comments and I really appreciate your kind words.

June is a very busy month, kids are finishing up school, teens are graduating and grass and gardens are growing . So today I have a couple things to share, the first one is this grad card and gift created with the travel girl line. It is not the conventional type with a cap and gown, but that's what I like most about it. It is for a teen girl about to head out into the world and I thought this collection was perfect.

Up next is a garden journal that I created with the Farm Girl line. Where I am, everything is growing like crazy and for the first time in my adult life I am growing a veggie garden. I loved the idea of creating something to help me keep track of all the ideas and growth times.

So I used the "grow" Here and Now book and divided it into sections of flowers, vegetables, fruit and trees.



I then printed all my photos 3x4in, you can easily get this size done at most kiosks and stores by combining 2 photos into a 4x6.



I used the doodads to decorate, accent and label my photos



I used the cards from miscellany for any longer journaling and information about specific plants



For the chapter on vegetables I printed out my companion planting chart, and adhered it on the first page. This is a chart that tells you which plants grow best together, and which plants will deter bugs and disease.



I have included spaces in the book to show off the stages of plant growth, like these little sprouting radishes, when they are fully grown I will add more photo cards like this one that I have for the broccoli.




Well that is it for today friends, so If you have not already, be sure to pop by my blog Scrap Notions and enter your name for my giveaway. Plus you'll always find more OA inspirations there too ;) 

Thank you again,

Sincerely

Lydia

Thursday Sketch Challenge | Piecing it All Together

Hi October Afternoon fans! It's Thursday, and that means another sketch challenge for you this week. It's Amy here today with an interesting twist on a collage-type sketch.

Today, I found inspiration from Pinterest, more specifically, this wonderful poster I found on it.I loved the piecemeal fashion in which it it gathered and yet it has a beautiful cohesive quality through it's colors, texture and thoughtful placement of it's individual parts. Using this idea, I put together a very similar sketch for our challenge today.

Adapting it's layout for scrapbooking purposes, I created a position for a title and for journaling, however, of course those can be easily adapted. I can see this sketch being used with dozens of tiny photos for a very fun impact, or you can use it in a manner such as Vivian has shown us today.

Here's what Vivian had to say about her fantastic creation:

"Amy’s sketch pushed me out of the box a bit, as I typically don’t use a lot of elements or embellishments on my pages. I switched up the sketch by placing my photo in the title slot and then surrounded my photo and journaling with lots of fun bits from the Travel Girl line, using the sketch as a rough guide for their placement. I love the end result! This sketch is perfect for stash-busting with all of the different elements on there!"

Isn't Travel Girl just the perfect collection, for Vivian's little "Orville" beauty? I love it! Thank you, Vivian!

Vivian and I both took a similar take on the sketch, by placing a photo in one of the main large areas within the sketch. 

 

In addition, I placed my journaling and title very close together, both the journaling section of the sketch, allowing the elements and photo of the layout to take center stage.

 
I used a mixture of both Travel Girl and Daily Flash to complete my page. By using a very strict yellow palette for all my elements, it provides a cohesive feel in what could become very chaotic with all the shapes, textures and sizes.

 

I hope you've been inspired by our sketch today! If you have the opportunity to give it a go, we'd love to see you upload it to our Flickr Gallery for all to enjoy! Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you have a wonderful day! ~Amy

Tuesday Tutorial: Selective Embossing

Hey everyone! It's Laura Craigie here today with a simple, fun, tutorial you can use on your Scrapbook pages and Cards alike.  

I call it selective embossing as we are choosing which parts of the paper we want to have a raised embossed look, and not an entire section.  Typically if you want to emboss your patterned paper you couldn't do it in the center of a single sheet of paper since the sheet would be much too large to fit through any embossing machine.  But by embossing on a second sheet of paper and lining the patterns up to match you can have the embossed section anywhere on your project.

Here is a layout I made that demonstrates this technique.

To really show you what I mean, lets get started on a card with the same technique.

The supplies you need are two sheets of identical patterned papers, I'm using two sheets from the 8x8 Travel Girl paper pad, an embossing folder, and any die or punch shape you like.

Cover the front of your card, or scrapbook page with the first sheet of paper.  Decide where on the patterned paper you want your shapes to come from, and if you are using dies, place them down on the duplicate paper exactly where you want them to appear on your project.

Secure the dies to your paper with Washi Tape so they don't shift while you run them through your die cut machine like this.

When you have your shapes cut, place them in your embossing folder and run them through your machine.  I ended up choosing an embossing folder with tiny polka dots, that needed a bit of help to really show up so I inked the edges of my hearts, and ran the ink pad over the embossed swections.

Then you take your embossed pieces and line the pattern back up with the sheet of patterned paper you used on your project.  Here is my finished card.

Thanks so much for stopping by today, I had so much fun making these projects and I hope you feel inspired to try this technique on your own projects, and of you do, don't forget to share them in our Flickr Gallery.

Laura :)

Monday Challenge: Scrap Those Scraps

Hey y'all! Mandy here with the Monday challenge for you. 

This weeks challenge is really pretty simple, I'm challenging you to reach into your scrap bins and use your October Afternoon scraps. I'm sure most of you have lots of scraps of all shapes and sizes so lets use them up! You could create a card, a mini album, a project life spread, tags, or a layout like Danni and I did.

I keep all my OA scraps separate from my other scraps and I put my embellishment scraps(cut stickers, misc labels, etc) in an old milk glass dish on my desk.Here are some of the scraps I pulled out when I began my layout:

This layout came together rather quickly because everything was already cut even the wonky yellow dot paper.I decided that I would use this photo of Avery that was a misprint I had previously cut down to use as a size guide on my projects(i guess this means I'll have to dig out another scrap to replace this now). Even though I had lots of scraps to use I kept the layout pretty clean and simple. I've used a mix of scraps from old and new lines like Travel Girl, Midway, and Farm Girl to create this layout. 

To give this layout a little added pop I outlined the title and main layer with a black pen. 

Danni played along with my challenge this week, I asked her to take a before picture of her scraps to give you an idea of what scraps she was working with:

Danni created this gorgeous layout with her Travel Girl scraps.

Here is what Danni had to say about the challenge and her layout:

I was really excited when Mandy invited me to participate in her use your scraps challenge.  I have been creating cards and projects like a mad-woman with the new October Afternoon Travel Girl line and so I had accumulated quite a pile of scraps, some little, some block of pp, some punched and some just itty bitty, they ALL went on this layout in some form, yes, even the punched ones...smile.  I only added embellishments and a title here and there to accentuate the layout, the rest was all scraps and it felt so good to have a home for them.  Thank you for such a fun challenge today Mandy, can't wait to see what everyone creates with their scraps pile.

I love how Danni used all those scraps, don't you?! The layers, the stitching, everything is just awesome!!

I hope we've inspired you to tackle those scraps! Please share your projects using your October Afternoon scraps with us in the OA Flickr group. We can't wait to see what you create! 

Have a wonderful week! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Lydia's Degrees of inspiration

When I scrapbook I don’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel, I do what I know works for me. So for today I wanted to show you my degrees of inspiration.

This first layout I did a little while ago, and it was the starting point for the other two I will show here.

Notice the location of the elements in all three layouts follow a similar pattern.

In this layout I replaced the two photos with 1, moved the location of the title and instead of the horizontal paper ribbon, I used a few embellishments to create a cluster in the lower left corner.

In this layout I turned the idea on it’s side and instead of a column of paper I used the photos to achieve the same effect. I kept the title and journaling in the same spot, just turning it.

There are hundreds of ways to make this layout your own, I challenge you to give it a try. And find you own degrees’ of inspiration. Don’t forget to upload it to the OA flicker gallery.

If you haven't already, take a minute and stop by my blog to put your name in for my give away.

till next week

Lydia

Thursday Sketch: Colorful Components

Happy Thursday! It's Jill here, with this week's sketch, which invites a gathering of colorful bits and pieces while also recognizing the wonders that white space can work on a layout. For my own take on the sketch, I used the Travel Girl, Daily Flash, and Farm Girl lines. My interpretation of the sketch is pretty direct, with a few alterations. 

I shifted the title away from the center and worked it into the cluster of photos, papers, and accents. I also modified the journaling block by tilting the journaling 90 degrees and including a few layers in the mix. I love the cheerful bright yellow background, but some variation of colors was necessary to temper that brightness a little. 

To reinforce the musical theme of the page, I incorporated a card from the Farm Girl Miscellany pack. I love the message of the song and the way that it validates the idea that growth and success are the products of good, hard work, which is exactly what my daughter experienced as a member of a choir. I also worked in some vintage sheet music here and there, as well as a few birds (which I fancy to be songbirds) from the Travel Girl collection. 

I shared the sketch with Mou, and just look at where it took her! She created a wonderful summery layout. 

Here's what Mou had to say about her layout: 

When I saw Jill's sketch, I immediately thought cluster! I broke up the clean linear configuration and mixed up bits and pieces from old and new OA collections: Travel Girl and Woodland Park. I threw in some paints to capture the laid-back essence of summer vacation at our place.

The way that Mou used paint is fantastic, as is the way that her handwriting becomes a seamless part of the design. The entire page is just so colorful and fresh. 

I'm curious to see where this sketch will take you! If you do happen to use this sketch as a springboard for a project, be sure to share that project in the October Afternoon Flickr gallery. 

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Congratulations to our Travel Girl blog hop winner!

Thank you everyone who participated in our Travel Girl blog hop. Don't we have the greatest design team? Those projects were fabulous! We loved seeing your enthusiasm for the collection. You are probably even more enthusiastic about who has won a Travel Girl collection kit!

Here she is:

I've been an OA addict since the beginning... Was it County Fair? Regardless, I enjoyed the Travel Girl blog hop & feel creatively-inspired to do some long overdue papercrafting. Thanks!

Posted by: Angela Allen | June 12, 2013 at 09:02 PM

Congratulations, Angela! Check your email for info on how to claim your prize.

Don't forget to check out our designers blogs to see if you won any of the goodies they are giving away!

 Amy Heller

Vivian Masket

Alex Gadji

Danni Reid

Laura Craigie

Jill Sprott

Mandy Koeppen

Tuesday Tutorial: Passport Cover

Hi OA fans! Alex here today showing you how to make this cute passport cover.

This is what we are going to play with today:

You are going to need the Travel Girl 8x8 paper pad, shape stickers, label stickers, doo-dads and a vinyl passport cover. I got my vinyl passport covers from Etsy. They don't cost much, $4.25 USD for 5 covers. These are the dimensions:

Let's pimp it!

Step 1: Take a 8x8 Passport paper and cut it to 7-1/8" x 5". That is 1/4" shorter and lower than the vinyl cover. Fold it like a card.

Step 2: Now we are going to add the negative part of the label stickers to make the background more interesting. If you, like me, haven't used your label stickers yet, you don't want to ruin them. Just peel off the negative layer, leaving your labels intact.

Step 3: Cut a piece little larger than the cover and attach it depending on how you want your "labels" to look like.

Step 4: Flip it over and cut off all the extra using a knife.

Step 5: Add the shape stickers and doo-dats (you can even use elements from the Miscellany pack) of your choice. Just try to keep it flat. Very important! You want it to fit inside the vinyl cover leaving the room for your passport. This is how I chose to decorate mine:

Step 6: Insert it in the vinyl cover:

Finally: Insert your passport and voilà! You are done! Easy peasy. 

I hope you have enjoyed this little tutorial of mine. The Travel Girl is perfect for this project! There are so many fun elements that can be used for decoration without adding too much thickness to the cover.

I can't wait to use my passport! I want to travel NOW! I want to travel with my Travel Girl.

Have a lovely day!

//Alex

Monday Challenge: Sweet Summertime

Hey everyone! Roree here with a Monday challenge for you.

This week officially kicks off the summer season, so I thought it would be fitting to challenge you to create a fun summer-themed project—maybe a layout about a family vacation or activity, a card for a friend, or some kind of project with sweet summer in mind. It's up to you!

For this challenge, I created this card:

While I didn't use "summer" in the sentiment, I used it as the inspiration for the card. When I think of summer, I think of sunshine. I created a sun with colorful rays using patterned papers and a border sticker from the Travel Girl and Farm Girl collections. I also added letter stitckers from Travel Girl and Daily Flash for the sentiment and some shape stickers and a brad from Travel Girl and Midway to finish it up.

I kept the colors and patterns bright and fun, giving the card a summertime feel.

Nicole played along with my challenge, and she created this amazing layout with Travel Girl and Daily Flash:

Nicole documented the start of her daughter's summer with a photo and journaling taken straight from her instagram feed—the perfect way for capturing and sharing all of summer's big (and not-so-big) adventures.

I just love how Nicole used the Sew Fun Banners to highlight her title, don't you?!

Are you ready to start creating with summertime in mind? Please share your summer projects using October Afternoon products with us in the OA Flickr group. We can't wait to see what you create.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Guest Designer Lydia Jackson jumps right in with some Travel Girl cards

Well Hello OA Fans, Lydia here with my first Guest Designer post. October Afternoon was generous enough to send me the brand new Travel Girl Collection, so for today's post I put together a set of cards for various occasions. I love having premade cards ready to grab for those last minute get togethers and special occasions that sneak up on you. Since Fathers Day is this weekend  I started by making this funny little card. I have to tell you I have had this song stuck in my head now for the last week.




This next card is a Thank you card. What I love about this collection is that it is very gender neutral, even though it has a hint of pink I think that it is completely suitable for a man or women.



This card is just fun , I love the cab, the inside is blank, but I figure it could be used for a going away card, moving card or even a little boys birthday card.




This last card was inspired by a random act of kindness. On Monday I went though a coffee drive through and when I got to the pay window, I discovered that my order had been paid for by the person in front of me. It brightened my whole afternoon. So I had the idea to create this card and write something uplifting and leave it for a stranger, perhaps it would make their day too, you never know.




In addition to these cards I have one more up on my blog , Scrap Notions. Plus since October Afternoon was so generous I also have a give away, so if you have a minute be sure to stop by.

Until next week......

Lydia