October Afternoon

Monday Challenge: Record Your Summer in Pocket Pages Part 3

Hello there October Afternoon fans, Mou here today with your Monday challenge!

Summer is wrapping up here. Schools start this week. This has been a summer of big events for our family. We have moved from Florida to New Jersey. And yes, for the first time, I am sensing that summer is really coming to an end as the evenings are getting rather chilly. New Jersey is not the land of everlasting summer... but I'm looking forward to welcoming autumn because that has always been my favorite!

At the beginning of this summer, I challenged myself and invited you all to join me to record this summer in pocket pages. You can read my original post here. I have used the October Afternoon Daily Flash system to record our summer. In order to not miss a single beat, I have taken photos all summer with my phone and posted them on my Instagram account with #oursummerof2015. As I progressed with my project, I realized yet one more time, how helpful the Daily Flash system is..

Here are two more spreads from my album.

As I continue working on this album, I find myself reaching for more October Afternoon Collections than just Summertime and loving it because they all blend together seamlessly!

So, how is your summer memory keeping coming along? Please share in your comments.

OA Summertime and Treasure Map | Mini Notebooks

Hey ya'll! It's Amanda here to wrap up my guest spot for August. I have really enjoyed creating some fun things, and this project is a bit different.  I'm sure many of you are owners of a Traveler's Notebook or similar method of planning or journaling.  Because I love the papers so much in the October Afternoon collections, I thought it would be fun to create a few personalized notebooks for use in a Traveler's Notebook or just to jot down notes or journal or whatever you'd like.

First, I chose some of my favorite papers. 

Then I printed several different notebook papers that I downloaded. I love that you can personalize not only the lines, but also the colors.

 

I made a few different sized notebooks, and I mostly used staples to bind them together, with the exception of one that I used twine to bind. I also used some simple embellishments on the outside of a few of them. 

I used an exacto knife to cut out a "tab" of sorts on the side to add some fun and a different pattern to the exterior of the notebook.

Once bound, I used an exacto knife to trim the edges of the pages so that they line up correctly once folded.

You can see that I chose several different options for the paper inside the notebooks.

These are so simple to make, and just seeing them inside my handbag makes me smile. I'm a notorious paper hoarder, so I like being able to see these on a regular basis instead of sticking them in an album where I can't enjoy them quite so much.

Thanks again for having me as a guest. I really enjoyed it.

Topic Tuesday: Maps

Every October Afternoon collection contains gems, those patterns that jump right out at you and beg to be used right away and hoarded forever at the same time. Among my favorites are the map papers that appear from time to time in collections. I ransacked my October Afternoon stash and pulled out a bunch of map papers to create this layout: 

There are so many patterns to love on this page, including "True North," "Shipwreck Coast," and "Skull Rock" from the Treasure Map collection, "Midnight Clear" from the Silent Night collection, and "Social Studies" from the Daily Flash/Milk Money collection. 

I cut each pattern into strips of varying sizes, and added sticker accents along the seams to unify the design and create continuity. 

Map patterns can even be found on October Afternoon alphas, like these from the Treasure Map collection. 

Here's hoping for even more maps to show up in future October Afternoon collections!  In the meantime, I'll be dealing with the "to use or to hoard?" conundrum. 

Thanks for stopping by the blog today! 

OA Summertime | Pocket Page Layout

Hey guys! It's Amanda here to share a pocket page layout I made with some October Afternoon Summertime goodies. If you know me, you know that the beach is hands-down my favorite place.  I loved pulling this layout together, and the Summertime line was a perfect fit.

I print all my pictures first, and then place coordinating papers and journal cards in the empty slots. Lately, I have been firmly in the "keep it simple" camp, so I stick to pictures that are 4x6s or 3x4s. It streamlines my process a bit, and I love the clean lines.

 

Then I place the embellishments and finish up with some journaling. I love to write, but I will be honest, journaling is my least favorite part of pulling together a layout.  My favorite pens to use in my pocket page layouts are Pentel Slicci 0.25 and Pilot Hi-Tec 0.25. 

Sketch Day: Back to School with Lunch Box Cards

October Afternoon has some of the cutest back to school graphics and products.  We have been back to school since the 7th, but with my mind still on summer, I decided to combine both the Summertime collection with some school themed products to make these lunch box cards.  I loved how well the worked together.

Each card is based off of this sketch.  The actual placements of stamps or embellishments on the cards vary from the sketch, but are inspired by the sketch.  With this inspiration, the cards came together quickly.  I was also able to interpret the sketch in three different ways making each card unique but similar.

I used the the Summertime stamps to make a school of fish for this card.  To get the multi colors on the main fish, I used three small Prima chalk inks to ink the stamp at one time.  The chalk ink worked really well, giving a nice dark, crisp color.  The 'one-of-a-kind' was stamped with the Daily Flash Inspiration roller stamp.  I fussy cut the stamped Out to Sea stamp to stitch in place at the bottom.

The next card, I pulled in some watercolors to color in the Milk Money cat stamp.   Then using the same stamp set, I stamped "make the grade" on one of the labels.  I also layered a Daily Flash Milk Money sticker on top of the chipboard speech bubble.

I mixed in a little Public Library with the "read" badge to go along with the cute little girl from the Milk Money stamp set.  To make her stand out more, I stamped her onto a round label and left her as is without coloring her in.  Reading and learning opens the doors for discoveries, so I added the Summertime stickers at the top.

The base of each card uses a different pattern paper from the Summertime collection, with the same pattern paper layered on top.  I stitched around the top pattern paper, leaving the top open for a pocket.  I cut pieces from the Milk Money Spelling pattern paper, stapled a tab to each one, and tucked into the pocket.  This gives me space to clip a note to the inside card or write directly on the card.

The different interpretations of the sketch would work for any card or pocket page cards.  Feeling really inspired, turn it into a layout.

I would love to see what you create.  Hope to see your project uploaded to either the October Afternoon Flickr gallery,  our Facebook page, or connect with us on Instagram via #octoberafternoon.

 

Tuesday Inspiration: The Stamps

Welcome to Tuesday Inspiration.  One way I find inspiration is from the products themselves.  One product I wanted to really play and get creative with were the Summertime Stamps.

My first idea was to stamp repeating images in a row, then as I played with them, I loved the stamps being stamped randomly at the top of my layout, which then inspired me to use some paint.  I spread my paint with an old credit card, then added another layer of paint with a heart brayer.  I used a grey ink for most of the stamps as part of the background, and then used black ink for the images or phrases I wanted emphasized.

 

Since my layout had the stamped strawberries, the Summertime Memory Card with the strawberry was perfect for adding my typed journaling about saying goodbye to Summer.  I carried the theme and the colors down the layout.

To bring more color and texture to the top of the layout, I fussy cut the lights from the Backyard pattern paper and adhered with pop dots, then added some chipboard arrows for repetition of the arrows at the bottom.

To finish off the layout, I added more embellishments to go with the carefree look.  

Hope you will take a look at your products and let them inspire your next project.  Share your project with us by uploading to the October Afternoon Flickr gallery, post it on our Facebook page, or connect with us on Instagram via #octoberafternoon.

Monday Challenge: Create a Scene

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

As I was browsing about Pinterest one day, I came across this pin:

Image via Pinterest

I immediately fell in love with the little cityscape at the top of the image. I thought it would be fun to create my own little scene on a card (and I did!). Here is what I came up with:

For the base of my scene, I used a journaling card from the Summertime Memory Cards pack. I used cloud stickers from the Saturday Mornings Shape Stickers sheet and hand cut a house and tree from Summertime Puffy Clouds, Heat Wave, and Green Grass patterened papers and Treasure Map Moby Dick Isle patterned paper.

I completed the scene with a few cross stitches and a Summertime Double Take heart sticker and Treasure Map Designer Brad.

I added the scene to a Treasure Map Moby Dick Isle patterned paper card base and used Daily Flash Clover "Storybook" Flash Alphas and a Daily Flash Snapshots Double Take tab sticker to create a title.

I finished the card with some machine stitching and a bit of baker's twine from the Sasparilla Wrap Pack.

If you would like to take on today's challenge and create a scene on your next project, please share your creation by linking it on Instagram with the hashtag #octoberafternoon, along with tagging @octoberafternoon, so we can see! You can also share your projects on our OA Facebook wall or the OA Flickr gallery.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

OA Summertime + Treasure Map | Road Trip Minibook

Hey ya'll!  Amanda here to share my first October Afternoon project as the guest designer for August.  One of my favorite things about October Afternoon is always their fun patterned paper. I decided to pull together a minibook of our July road trip to the Smoky Mountains, focusing on all of the fun patterns in the Summertime and Treasure Map collections. 

I've been really loving Instax pictures lately, but I will confess that none of these are really Instax pictures. I simply put pictures (iPhone and Nikon picture) into an Instax template and printed them out. I like using these for a minibook because of the consistency of sizes, and also I can make a small-sized minibook with them.  This book is 4x6 in size.  I used Silhouette canvas to print the cover, and simply trimmed it using my paper cutter.  I added a small embroidery thread embellishment to the corner, but otherwise kept the cover simple.

 

I chose pictures that focused on our outdoor adventures during this trip, including an impromptu swim in a creek near Cade's Cove, mini golf, and other exploring. 

I love the Sew Fun Banners in the Treasure Map collection, so I used a few of them here to embellish this photo of my mother and oldest son playing mini-golf.  

 

 

The border stickers are also a fun addition to these pages. 

 
I really enjoy mixing and matching the papers in the October Afternoon collections.  The colors really work well together.  
I am a sucker for a photobooth, and I almost always make the boys take pictures when I come across one. This strip cracks me up because my youngest son was so animated.  I also had to trim one image off the bottom of the strip in order for it to fit. 

 

I love the dimension that tabs add to a layout, so I chose to punch several tabs to use in this book so that the tabs would peek out of the side (and one out of the bottom) of the book. I love that it adds some color to the book when it's closed. 

Thursday Sketch

Hey, everyone! Roree here with you all today.

Using inspiration from a graphic print I found on Pinterest, I played around a bit in Photoshop and came up with this week's Thursday sketch:

October Afternoon has quite a few different striped papers in their collections to choose from that will work great with this sketch. I chose two from the Summertime and Cakewalk collections to create this card:

I used the Blues Skies b-side from Summertime for the gray stripes and the Paper Straws b-side from Cakewalk for the pink stripes. To add a little texture and visual interest, I machine stitched with straight or zigzag stitches every few lines.

My main reason for choosing these papers/colors is that I have been dying to use that adorable little car sticker from the Summertime Double Take sticker sheet. But because the window area of the car was open, I needed to add something behind it or the patterned paper would have been way too distracting and the car wouldn't have stood out.

So, I used a journaling card from the Daily Flash Snapshots collection behind the window and just trimmed off the excess. Because it looked a little bare, I added a sweet sentiment from the Daily Flash Summer Catch-Phrase Stamp. I then finished the card with a pink heart sticker from the Double Take sticker sheet and a gray Daily Flash Apple Cider Pop Drop.

If today's sketch inspires your next project, please share your creation by linking it on Instagram with the hashtag #octoberafternoon, along with tagging @octoberafternoon, so we can see! You can also share your projects on our OA Facebook wall or the OA Flickr gallery.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Tuesday Inspiration: Polaroid Collage

Hi there! Happy Tuesday! Emily here with today's inspiration piece! I knew I wanted to use a photo collage of some sort on my layout this week, so I did a Pinterest search for collage inspiration.  I found a few really unique polaroid collages similar to these:

(Both of these images have broken source links!I My apologies to the original photographers!)

I really love the look of breaking a single photo up into a few different photos and layering them on top of one another. I had a perfect picture in mind - of the bottom half of my kids at the pool last week. I have a similar one with their heads, but I kind of love this one of just their bodies and feet!!  The only problem, however, is that I wasn't exactly sure how to crop the photos to make them all fit together just right. I ended up using my cropping tool in my photo editor to create four squares in each corner of the picture. Each square looks pretty similar...here are the four sections:

I printed all four out and tried to layer them, however it wasn't working as well as I'd hoped. I decided to make all of the photos a bit off kilter from one another, which is why my little guy on the right kind of has two heads! I probably could have just left off the bottom row of photos, as they only show the concrete, but I like having four photos versus only two. I know there is probably some way to make my collage look as cool as the two inspiration pieces, but I'm not technically savvy enough to figure out, so this will have to do!

I used foam adhesive to create different levels on my layout. The bottom two photos are flat against the background, the third is raised up by a single layer of foam adhesive, and  the very top actually has two layers of foam adhesive. I really wanted there to be a lot of dimension, so I also raised up my die cut title.

Finally I found as many blue and aqua elements I could to include! The adorable little fish from the Summertime Pillow Puffs was perfect for this layout - especially after my title ended up a little off center!  The fish just swam on to the end like he was meant to be there! There are also tons of beautiful blue papers and embellishments in the Treasure Map line that made their way onto this layout!

I would love to see how you are inspired by these cool photo collages! Upload your project to the October Afternoon Flickr gallery, post it on our Facebook page, or connect with us on Instagram via #octoberafternoon. Happy Tuesday, and happy scrapping!