October Afternoon

Surf City | Old with the new!

Hello again, it's Nicole Nowosad here again for my last Guest DT post here on the October Afternoon blog!

I am mixing some older October Afternoon products with new on my project today.

I couldn't resist the urge to use several patterns from the Saturday Mornings collection, mixed together with some of my favorites from my stash like Daily Flash, Sidewalks, Girl Talk, Snapshots, Boarding Pass and 9 to 5! That is a lot of collections :)

It was easy to layer and mix the patterns from these collections by creating a simple grid and layering papers together. I stitched the layers together, added my photos and then some October Afternoon embellishments. I have always loved the fun buttons by October Afternoon and used some of those on this page.

I have been hoarding this pretty floral paper and fussy cut some out and added more stitching and buttons to finish off my page.

Thank you so much for joining me this month on the blog - I hope you enjoyed my projects! Thanks to October Afternoon for having me this month!

 

ETA: Thank you Nicole for sharing your time and your talent with October Afternoon and with our fans and followers here!

Thursday Sketch: Rectangles

Hi everyone, Mou here today with Emily and a sketch!

My sketch is simply a collection of rectangles. Turn them on their sides, use them as is, pick one or all... however you choose to play with them, you'll get a fun layout. Here's mine:

For this layout, I used the Pancakes paper from Saturday Mornings collection as my background. Now, why would I choose a pancakes paper to create a baby page? Well, because I'm flippin' crazy for my little one :) The woodgrain side of the Pancakes paper was just perfect for making mats for my photos to stand out on an otherwise busy background. Little strips of Bacon paper, some Saturday Mornings Designer Brads and Border & Label Stickers along with a few stickers from different October Afternoon collections was all I needed to tell my story. Here are a couple of close-ups of my layout.

And here's Emily's take on the sketch. Notice how we both used the same papers for completely different themes.

Emily says: "Sometimes I feel bad when I'm assigned a sketch challenge, because my layouts inevitably look nothing like the sketch. This is no exception! When I started out creating this layout, I planned on following Mou's rectangle sketch almost exactly. However, as I started pushing paper around and choosing embellishments, I ended up keeping only the one large rectangle. I layered paper and added bits and pieces until it felt like a cohesive layout to me. I don't think that you would ever guess that her sketch inspired me, but I suppose that is one great way to use sketches - as a starting point!  The very first things I added to my layout were the large strip of woodgrain on the bottom and the large section of Saturday Mornings Pancake paper!  The rest is history!  I had fun pulling yellow and brown elements from both the Saturday Mornings collection, as well as a few items from various past lines!"

Thanks for another great layout, Emily!

Hope you find the sketch helpful and thanks for stopping by!

Adventures l Designer Inspiration

Hello! Emily here!  Welcome to another day of Saturday Mornings love!  Today I challenged myself and the talented Mou Saha to create a project based on this piece of inspiration that I discovered on Pinterest:

(Source: The Progressive Pearl)

Here is what Mou had to say about today's inspiration:  I loved the quote Emily picked. I wanted it to stand out on my page. So, I wrote it with paint and brush leaving room for my photo which I cut out. Once the quote and photo were in place, I embellished with Saturday Mornings Designer Brads, Border & Label stickers, and strips of Bacon and Crepes papers and Daily Flash Girl Talk Tin Pin. You don't have to use a lot, sometimes a few well-placed embellishments do the trick because of their colors and designs.

I'm blown away by Mou's awesome title work and her entire layout! Gorgeous!!!

I totally love both the colors and the quote in this inspiration piece, however I was having a difficult time finding a photo that would fit the whole "adventure" theme. I decided to go a completely different route, but to use the double font concept in my layout.  I am not usually a pink lover, but there is something about the pinks in the Saturday Mornings line that I love. I decided to go with an all pink (crazy!!) layout! I had originally planned on using the title "Little Miss Pink Cheeks," but I didn't have enough pink chipboard letters, so it ended up as "Pink Cheeks." The funniest part is that when my printer printed this photo, you can't really even see that her cheeks were pink like in the original photo!!  But, it was too cute not to use!

Most of my pink products come from the Saturday Mornings collection, however I added a few extra pink bits and pieces from the Daily Flash Girl Talk line which is one of my all time favorites! I love how versatile the Saturday Mornings papers are - who would guess that this pinktastic layout was made using a line that celebrates the weekend! ;)  The final layout looks absolutely nothing like the inspiration piece that I love so much, but it's a great reminder that it is perfectly acceptable to be "inspired" by any piece, no matter how small, of the inspiration!  

We would love for you to play along! Upload your layout to the October Afternoon Flickr gallery, post it on our Facebook page, or connect with us on Instagram via #octoberafternoon. Happy Wednesday, and happy scrapping!

Topic Tuesday | One Little Word

Hello OA Fans!  Patricia here with you today to challenge you to document about your One Little Word (OLW) if you haven't done so already.  And if you have, maybe create another layout on your progress.  With the holidays and new year, the year is already going too fast, but it is never too late to set goals and dreams.

October Afternoon has created I think my most favorite collection.  Saturday Mornings has both great A and B sides to the pattern papers.  The A side of Scones and the B side of Cereal pattern papers were my two favorites for this layout.  I backed the grey cardstock with the Omelette pattern paper.

I used the Saturday Mornings collection with Daily Flash to document my OLW "Stretch."  I incorporated some long stitching using all 6 strands of embroidery floss horizontally and then one diagonally, tucking in the photo under some of the strands.  Extended my OLW title with an arrow from Daily Flash, and added more color by die cutting a stacked flower.

I added my journaling to the top on the same grey cardstock, layering more of the Saturday Mornings pattern papers and stickers and Daily Flash.  

Finished off the layout with OA pink Sprinklers.  I love how this layout came out!

 

I am so excited to have Melanie Blackburn with me today to share her take on documenting her OLW.

Melanie says:

I'm so excited to be contributing to today's blog post along with Patricia. For the first year I'm attempting to document my OLW. To create this layout I was inspired by the cloud stamp from the Saturday Morning collection. This layout is 6x8, to accommodate the handbook in which I document my OLW, so the stamp was perfect for creating a fun background. I used regular ink, once it was dry I painted the clouds with watercolors. Afterwards I added my OLW in some of the clouds using my typewriter. I'm really happy with how this turned out!!! The following supplies were also used on this layout; Partly Cloudy chipboard, Label Sticker Public Library, Saturday Mornings Tin Pins and Brads.  I hope you will play along with us and share your OLW. Thank you for the inspiration Patricia, I'm glad to finally have documented my OLW.

I LOVE how Mel repeated the clouds and the word 'embrace.'  Repetition is key to keeping with your intentions of your OLW, and this layout captures her desire to make this word a reality.  Thank you so much Mel for sharing your gorgeous layout!

Now it is your turn.  We would love to see your layout for your OLW or a layout about your progress of your word this year.  Please share on the October Afternoon Flickr Group, or share on Instagram using hashtag #octoberafternoontopictuesday and tag me @patricia_roebuck.  Can't wait to see!

Mix-it-up Mondays: Love Saturday Mornings

Hi everyone, Mou here with some Saturday Mornings Love for you!

There are a lot of things to love about Saturday Mornings, but my favorite part is not having to wake up to the annoying sound of an alarm clock! I think this illustration sums up my sentiment

(via Pinterest)

Here's my layout

On this layout, I used Saturday Mornings papers Orange Juice and Bacon along with Border & Label Stickers and Designer Brads. I used Daily Flash Alpha Deep Sea and Flash Chip Photo Booth to embellish. Here's a close-up of my layout

Today I have Laura with me. Here's how Laura interpreted the illustration above in her beautiful card.

Here's what Laura says:

" I loved Mou's inspiration image, and decided to make a card using the first part of the quote, "Happiness Is.."  I love making cards that can be sent for no reason other than to let the recipient know you are thinking of them.  I started the card by choosing the beautiful floral paper from the Saturday Mornings line, then built everything else around it.  To ground my letter sticker sentiment I used a card from Daily Flash All Boy line.  To tie the papers in I used the matching floral sticker, and dressed it up with a glitter pen and some Pop Drops from the Apple Cider line which matched perfectly."

Hope you have fun thinking up a list of things you love about Saturday Mornings as well as other things that make you happy and creating layouts and cards about them!

For OA Fans and Followers: Button Farm Club Kit & October Afternoon's Saturday Mornings Special Offer!

Happy Saturday Morning to all of you ! Today, October Afternoon is excited to share some Saturday Mornings designs with you that are part of February's Kit over at the Button Farm Club! Here are just a few adorable sneaks of creations made from this kit:

 
  

 

 Today, October Afternoon is sharing with you a special promotion for all of you loyal customers and fans/followers! FOR OCTOBER AFTERNOON FANS AND FOLLOWERS (blog, Instagram followers @octoberafternoon, OA Facebook Fans and Twitter fans (oct_afternoon):

To start your Saturday morning off right, Button Farm Club is offering you OA fans 10% off of your purchase OR 10% off the FIRST month of a NEW SUBSCRIPTION with them! In order for you to take advantage of this special offer, you need to use the COUPON CODE "octoberafternoon" (no spaces) DURING CHECKOUT.

*LIMIT: ONE COUPON PER PERSON

To view more details of this cute kit, the contents of the kit, and to take advantage of this special offer, click here: Button Farm Club February 2015 Kit. 

 

 

 Thank you for your continued interest and support of our products! Have a lovely weekend! 

Friends | Use those scraps

Hello OA fans! It's Nicole Nowosad back on the blog today with one of my favorite new pages using my favorite October Afternoon products - patterned paper!

Let's just say I have quite the collection of October Afternoon papers in my stash. I wanted to use some of those for my project, integrating in the new Saturday Mornings collection too!

I keep a lot of scraps, so I used leftovers from all my other Guest DT projects to make this page!

The best part of this project is that I barely used my paper trimmer. I simply cut some strips of scraps of papers from Saturday Mornings, Snapshots, Girl Talk and Sidewalks.

I added some Flower Sack pieces from my stash and some Pop Drops too in monochromatic colors.

I added some hand cut letters from the same papers in the strips and stitched up the whole project! I finished off the page by sprinkling some Sprinklers on my cardstock.

I have one last Guest DT post next week, I hope you will stop by and say hi. Here is a sneak of that project. See you then!

Thursday Sketch: Love Is

Hi everyone! Alex here today bringing you this week's sketch. I chose to focus on this week's theme "Love is..." when I designed it.

And here is my layout using OA's lovely Saturday Mornings collection. 

Love is many things. One of them is definitely getting up and baking scones at 7AM (if you ask me). 

I have used papers Hash Browns, Orange Juice, Cereal and Grapefruit for my strips and to back the letters in my title. Btw, I have used the free font Budmo for the word "love".

I have used a lot of bits and pieces from different collection for this layout, such as flash blurbs and snap caps from DF Apple Cider, Good Day and Good To Go Daily Flash tin pins, double take stickers and pop drops from DF Milk Money and even an old Farm Girl tidbit. I love how easy all OA collections are to mix!

I love to mix different types of alphas for my titles. Besides the cut-out word "love", I have used DF Nightfall, DF Dandelions and DF Night Owl. And seriously, just how cute are those little cereal Saturday Mornings stickers?? I have used them in a same way as I would use buttons or sequins. 

So, I sent my sketch to Roree knowing that she would amaze me. She always does! I love, love, love how she used that big, cute sofa sticker from the Saturday Mornings collection! Eeeeek! 

And here is what Roree has to say about her amazing card:

"As soon as I received the sketch that Alex put together for this week's sketch post, I fell in love immediately! I knew I wanted to use it on a card and the first collection I thought of for it was Girl Talk. I knew the Dish patterned paper would be perfect for the "Love Is..." theme this week. But I was torn having the new Saturday Mornings collection at my fingertips to play with. So I decided to combine the two! I used Girl Talk's Giggle patterned paper for the base of my card and strips of the Whisper and Dish patterned papers for the strips along the bottom. I found the adorable boy and girl sticker on the Saturday Mornings Sticker Sheet and trimmed it to fit my card. I finished by adding the title using Campfire's Letterpress Alpha Stickers, a heart sticker from Girl Talk's Double Take Stickers pack, Daily Flash's Red Wagon Shop Front Alpha Stickers, and a sentiment trimmed from a card in the Saturday Mornings' Mix pack. Then, I tied it all together with some baker's twine from Cakewalk's Wrap Pack."

It's brilliant, isn't it? Thank you so much, Roree!!

I hope that you feel inspired to play along with our theme and/or this sketch. If you do, be sure to share it with us on Facebook or Instagram. Tag @octoberafternoon and use the hashtags #octoberafternoon #oasketchday so we can easily find you :-) We love seeing your work! 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a lovely day!

On The Brain | Designer Inspiration

Hello everyone! Suz here with today's OA Designer Inspiration challenge. This week Ginny challenged me to create with this fabulously fun inspiration piece:

 

 

SOURCE

"When I first saw Ginny's inspiration piece, my mind brain was a storm of ideas! (Understandably so, it is an amazing inspo piece, yes?) I was inspired by all of the stream of consciousness bubbles in the piece and while initially I thought I would create a bunch of speech bubbles at the center of my design, my creative brain made a quick right turn when I saw the adorable furniture shape stickers in the Saturday Morning collection. I decided instead of the stream of consciousness/speech like bubbles coming from the image's mind, I would make a "wall of frames" in the center of the design that enclosed my journaled list of favorite Saturday Morning childhood cartoons and then make the rest of the design look like a living room setting.

I have to say, I had so much fun making this paper living room come to life by raising up the furniture stickers with foam adhesive and hand drawing and then stitching over the frame collection (I erased the pencil lines afterwards! I really loved grounding the design with a "baseboard trim" made from the Saturday Mornings Pancakes patterned paper (woodgrain, Side B), the carpet, made from the Side B of the Crepes patterned paper, and the rug from the Cereal patterned paper (Side B). While this layout is photo-less, I am ok with that because I am quite certain there are no pictures in existence of me watching cartoons! I plan to add this to my album that is all about me. It is simply a collection of memories from my childhood and I can always pair it with a photograph of me from that approximate time period on the page that opposes this design. In the end, it's all good. ;)

Other items I used to complete this page were: Saturday Mornings Word Stickers, Saturday Mornings Border & Label Stickers, Saturday Mornings Shape Stickers, and Daily Flash Milk Money Pop Drops.

Thank you Ginny for inviting me to play along! My mind is already percolating on another layout inspired by this inspirational image!"

If you feel like playing along with this fun inspiration piece, please share your creations with us on Instagram with the hashtag #oadesignerinspiration and tagging @octoberafternoon @suzmannecke @ginnyhughes

 

Happy Wednesday all!

 

Topic Tuesday: A Heart-to-Heart

One of the ways we learn what love is (and isn't) is through the advice of those who know what love is (and isn't). In honor of this week's "Love is..." theme on the October Afternoon blog, fellow DT member Patricia and I have taken on the "mother lode" of journaling prompts, giving love advice to our daughters. That's right. It's time for a heart-to-heart, in the form of a scrapbooking layout. 

Prompt: Think back through your romantic history and reflect upon how you came to know what love is and is not.  If it helps, you could structure this as advice from a parent to a child, based on experience. You could reflect on what your parent(s) taught you about romantic love and what you hope to impart to your own children. 

Patricia's layout shares her love story while also teaching her daughter a little something about how to write her own. 

Patricia explains:

"I was very young, 22, when I met my future husband.  What I wanted to say to my daughter was don’t get married so young, wait, take your time.  But I was also a mature 22 year old and stood my ground on what I knew as a whole I needed rather than doing only what my heart wanted.  With having an only daughter, I know there will be plenty of opportunities to have heart-to-heart conversations about love, self-respect, and desires, so I picked this photo to depict these talks we will have.  My journaling only skims the surface, telling my daughter how my husband and I met, how we both knew we were ‘the’ one, and how he wasn’t truthful to me or another girl.  I had basically written him off."

"I used Saturday Mornings to tell my story.  The block from the front side of the Scones pattern paper is perfect for the journaling.  I layered it on top of the rich dark brown and honey weave from the Crepes pattern paper, then fussy cut the flowers from the reverse of that same pattern paper to dot above and on top of my journaling."

"I used the chipboard hearts instead of spelling out the word for my title from Daily Flash, pulling in more from Daily Flash and Public Library to help embellish my page.  I love how the long grey border sticker worked in perfectly for the theme of my layout from Saturday Mornings   I attached it vertically to either side to go with with the design of the layout and not take away from it.  Other products I used:  Apple Cider.  Thanks so much Jill for having me and giving me a creative push to create from the heart."

Isn't her layout incredible? It's apparent how much of her heart and soul she invested in the page. 

Like Patricia, I have a daughter, but mine is of an age at which romantic love is no longer in the hypothetical future. She's been "crossed in love," as wise father Mr. Bennet once put it, but she hasn't yet known the kind of heartbreak that I experienced at her age (thank goodness). My journaling offers another kind of heart-to-heart. 

Since I knew that I would have a lot to say, I chose to print my journaling on a series of October Afternoon label stickers. I started by recollecting the advice my mother gave me, and retraced my history of heartbreak and the way I learned what love is and isn't. 

I then shifted the focus of the journaling from my heart to my daughter's. 

I opted for a warm color palette on my layout, and pulled together papers in warm hues from the Saturday Mornings collection. The design is a mix of turbulence and order; I suppose it's like the way that good advice can bring clarity to one's emotions. To create the background, I painted a sheet of cardstock with large brushstrokes of acrylic paint, and then pressed the sheet onto another, which became the foundation for this layout. 

This week's prompt is definitely a worthwhile one to explore.  Both Patricia and I got so much out of creating these projects! 

We'd love to see what you come up with. Be sure to share your projects with us in the October Afternoon Flickr gallery. 

Thanks for visiting today!