October Afternoon

Holiday thank you cards from Michelle...

Hey everyone, it's Michelle here on the blog today and I'm sharing some holiday thank you cards with you.  Writing hand written thank you cards is a must for my family still.  It's always a dilemma of what theme to make these cards though because I'm making cards for holiday gifts we received but the holiday is over.  

So this year I decided to look past the obvious Make it Merry holiday collection and see what the Farm Fresh collection had to offer.  I found a few papers that had holiday colors yet didn't have any holiday patterns or themes to them.  Perfect!

I love the Vintage Wallpaper background stamp so I knew I wanted to try it out.  I inked up some manila shipping tags in red ink, leaving the top portion of the tags uninked.  

Next I stamped a sentiment onto some Watering Can Label Stickers.  I then ran the labels through my vintage typewriter to finish off a sentiment for my card fronts. 

Using a neutral card base I adhered  a patterned paper background, the stamped tags, a strip of patterned paper and a strip of the Tea Towel Washi tape.  The last step not shown was to adhered my stamped labels and then finish off the cards with red & white baker's twine.

It's always fun to receive a card in the mail and it's even more to see a spruced up envelope.  That's when you know it's hand made, right?  I stamped on some images from the December kit stamp set then added a strip of Washi tape.  Washi is great for envelopes because it's flat and stays adhered when going through the mail system.  

Here's my grouping of the four thank you cards I made.  Holiday colors but not over the top holiday themed.  

Perfect for my family to write a short note inside.  Remember...let's not forget the art of sending a handwritten thank you card. It means so much to the recipient to receive an actual card instead of an email or text message.  

Thanks for joining me today and Happy New Year everyone!  

Thursday Sketch: On the Diagonal

Happy Thursday! Vivian here with this week's sketch. Today's sketch adds a bit of fun to a clean-lined design with several strong diagonals.

I shared my sketch with Roree, who had this to say, "When I saw the sketch, I immediately thought of sun rays, so that is the direction I went with it."

Roree created her fun card by combining products from all of the following lines: Midway, Woodland Park, Sidewalks, Thrift Shop, and Farm Fresh. I love the combination of all of the different yellow patterns on Roree's card and her gorgeous three-dimensional flower embellishments. Let's get a closer look:

I used the new Witch Hazel line to create a layout using the sketch:

My title combines black letter stickers from the Witch Hazel Mix-Up 12 X 12 Alpha Stickers with letters created by using the "Today" Here & Now Book cover as a stencil with the Swivel Chair Sprinkler from the 9 to 5 line.

If you create anything with this sketch we'd love to see it! Please be sure to post your work in our October Afternoon Flickr gallery.

Monday Challenge: 5+ Photos

Happy Halloween!  Roree here, and I have a challenge for you today. 

Now a lot of you know me as a card maker.  Cards are my favorite things to create, and they are what I am most comfortable creating.  I do layouts, mini albums, and altered project too, but not nearly as much.  When I was thinking about what kind of challenge to post, I really thought about what would be challenging to me.  The first thing that came to mind was layouts.  While I do like to take photos, I am not great about doing it.  I take a couple here and there, but for the most part I always forget to take my camera with me wherever I go.  I never seem to have enough photos to put together a story on my pages, so I stick to one or two photo layouts.  Maybe three photos if I am lucky. 

So with that in mind, my challenge for you today is to create a layout with 5 or more photos.   For some of you this may not be as much of a challenge so for you, try and get more on a layout than you have ever done before.  Because it really is about challenging yourself, isn't it?  

Here is the layout I created for this challenge:

I really had to dig through my photos to find a day that I took a lot of pictures.  Luckily, I found a day that fit in with a fall/pumpkin theme in honor of Halloween.

I kept my design simple to really focus on the photos.  (I think this is the most photos I have ever used on one page.  LOL)  I love the Print Multiple Photos feature on Photoshop Elements.  It prints all of my photos at one time, and has multiple sizes to choose from.  I printed out all of my photos in two sizes, and then mixed and matched them. 

And I created some fun, little pumpkins to spruce up my title and play on the theme.

 

Collections used:  5 & Dime, Rocket Age, Campfire, Farm Fresh, Fly a Kite

Lexi played along with my challenge this week.  Here is what she came up with and what she had to say about the challenge:

"We just came back from our first true family vacation and, as you can image, took LOTS of photos. I am actually embarrassed to say how many, but I am a scrapbooker so you KNOW it was a lot ;) I knew Roree had the 5+ challenge coming up and it was a perfect way to scrap several of the photos I had just taken. These are pics are of the boys seeing the ocean for the first time. I printed them all out at 2.5x3.5" and added a little bit of a white cardstock mat. I added the bit of journaling with the title on the tag, which left me room to play with some paint, ink, and lots of patterns, without it feeling too crazy.

Collections used:  Sidewalks, Farmhouse, Sasparilla, Rocket Age and Seaside

So are you up for the challenge?  If so, make sure to upload your finished layout to the OA Flicker Gallery.  We love to see what you all create using OA products!

Hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween!  Thanks for stopping by!

Look what Lacey Goode Castor made!

Lacey found the Farm Fresh Fabric at her local quite store and made this super cute quilt. Believe it or not, it was her first quilt! Pleas help me is congratulating Lacey on a job well done!

And the Fabrics make it look even cuter.  Just look at those pinwheels.

Monday Challenge: Mix and Match

Happy Monday! Vivian here with this week’s Monday challenge. Today we’re keeping it simple with a challenge that asks you to create something using three or more October Afternoon product lines. If you haven’t already noticed, one of the great features of October Afternoon products is that the colors coordinate across lines, making it easy to mix and match products with success.

Becky played along with the challenge this week and came up with a fantastic and fun layout that combines products from several different lines, including Sidewalks, 5 & Dime, Modern Homemaker, Fly a Kite, and Thrift Shop. Note how the yellows, pinks, and aquas combine across the paper lines.

After declaring this a simple challenge I went in a more challenging direction, as I decided to see whether I could use something from every October Afternoon line ever created, from County Fair (the first October Afternoon line ever) through to Sidewalks (in stores now). It was hard, but I did it! Note how the greens, reds, yellows, oranges, and aquas combine across lines and how the alphas coordinate.

I started with a strip of paper from County Fair (the aqua at the bottom) and then cut ¾” wide strips of patterned paper, choosing one paper from each line and gluing the strips to a 12” wide scrap of cardstock to form my own striped paper. I cut the striped paper in half once I was done and used a strip both above and below my photos. Product lines not represented in patterned paper include Schoolhouse (scalloped border sticker), Modern Homemaker (apple punched from patterned paper), Boarding Pass (taller letter stickers), 5 & Dime (Red Wagon sprINKler), Rocket Age (Comet Tail sprINKler), and Sidewalks (label sticker).

If you are an October Afternoon blog reader but don’t visit the website, I encourage you to check out the products section. You can click on each line to look at thumbnails of each product and can click on those thumbnails to get a closer look at products, including the A and B sides of the patterned papers. I’ll let you in on a little secret – I use this section of the website often to help plan my projects. It’s quicker and easier (and less messy!) than pulling out all my papers and embellishments, especially when I’m looking for certain colors, patterns, types of stickers, etc.

Hope you’ll participate in this simple (or not so simple, depending upon how you interpret it!) challenge that’s also a good stash-buster. If you do participate, please link up your work in our October Afternoon Flickr gallery so we can see your creations!

Happy mixing and matching!

Tuesday Tutorial on Wednesday: Layering With Fabric

Last week I blogged about making embellishments using fabric...this week, we are using fabric as patterned paper! Here's a little bit about my thought process when incorporating this bold fabric pattern:

1. Choose fabric.

2. Chose another fabric.

3. End up with a pile of fabric on the desk due to indecision. (Right here I should have stopped and realized that I needed to choose MY PHOTO first, like I usually do. It's a lot easier to choose colors when you have a photo to work with.)

4. Notice the red gingham fabric (from October Afternoon Farm Fresh fabric collection) overlapping a piece of pattern paper and decide it's a sign that those two patterns were meant to be together.

5. Rip the fabric into a rectangle and trim long strands.

6. Adhere fabric to paper and stitch around the edge several times. I used brown thread for two reasons: I like a dark contrasting thread on bold colors, AND brown was already in my sewing machine. (Another meant-to-be moment.)

7. I visited my scrap drawer to collect some strips for a frame around the fabric and stitched around those.

8. At this point, I wish I had taken a picture (hindsight is 20/20!) because I'd like to show how desperately the layout was begging for a neutral frame. I pulled my new absolute favorite Sidewalks pink grid (Ring Around the Rosie) and trimmed my page to fit on it with a nice, big frame border. MUCH better.

9. Here is when I realize that there are very few pictures in my extensive collection of digital photos that could possibly work on this crazy, colorful, in-progress layout. It was going to have to contain a LOT of white space! I was happy to find this photo from several years ago. Not only does it have lots of white space, but the colors are quite neutral. Happy me.

11. This is the place where I got excited and made the Chip 'n Stick banner with the twine from my Sidewalks Wrap Pack. (It's my favorite thing about the layout besides the photo.) I did remove the sticky back from the banner pieces so they would be easy to play with.

12. Originally I had thought I'd use the white space in the photo for the title, but it worked very well to put it on a Shape Sticker below the photo.

13. I spread the journaling out vertically to give the page a downward "flow" (and because that's how they fit!).

14. I forgot to add my own handwriting to this layout, so I will go back and write something (probably just the city and state) in the bottom left-hand corner.

I told my fellow design team member Jill Sprott what I was doing and she came up with this completely amazing layout:

Here's what Jill said about her layout:

"There is so much that can be done with the cute new October Afternoon fabric line, but even keeping it simple works, too! I sewed a square of the new October Afternoon fabric on a sheet of patterned paper from the new Farmhouse line, and used both as a backdrop for this photo of my great-grandmother. I've been wanting to tell this story about her for some time now. It's kind of a ghost story, but it's also a love story, I suppose."

More detail shots of this one (because I KNOW you want to get up close!):

Have you used fabric on a layout before? Try it. Or try it again! We want to see the results, so please post your creations in the October Afternoon Flickr Gallery!

 

Tuesday Tutorial: Fabric Embellishments

Happy Tuesday again! It's Stacey here, getting crafty with the new October Afternoon fabric, making machine-stitched, layered shapes for cards (or layouts!). I'll share the steps of this simple process here with some tips on how to make these slightly shabby, just-about-foolproof embellishments.

You'll need your printed fabric (I used the October Afternoon Farm Fresh fabric), plain unbleached muslin (I just used scraps), your sewing machine, thread in a few colors, and an iron (the following is a large, close-up photo of my iron...not sure why it's so big!).

First, just smooth out your fabrics with the hot iron. Layer the printed fabric under two layers of muslin. You can cut rectangles or use scraps, depending on the sizes of your shapes. Since I knew I'd be making smaller embellishments, I just used scraps of muslin.

After ironing, cut a piece a little larger than the shape you plan to make - this is an "eyeballing" situation. Just look at it. If your card is 4"X6", then the shape needs to be smaller than that! It's not a precise science. :)

Now for the stitching. Notice that I do not have a design drawn on my fabric. You could lightly pencil some lines on there to follow if you really want to, but "freehand" stitching the design is easy and makes the process that much more creative! And, besides, you are going for a shabby, intentionally imperfect look, right?

Here's my heart after the first time around.

I ended up going around three times on this one.

Leaving some space between the cut and the stitches, cut out the shape and run your finger around the edges.

I layered the heart onto a kraft card with a journaling card, die cuts, stickers, buttons, twine, and lace from the Sidewalks collection. I love the texture and dimension that the fabric embellishment adds!

 

Another way to make interesting fabric embellishments is to layer the fabric with two layers of muslin again, but this time machine stitch all over the piece, curving randomly, crossing over, almost "scribbling" on the fabric with the thread. It should end up up similar to this:

Then cut out (again, no pattern, just eyeball it) a couple of leaves and a stem. Do the same with some other fabrics to make flower petals (I did a messy swirl stitching pattern on the flower pieces), and cut those out as well. Adhere to the card, add a button, you have a lovely, layered, stringy, stitchy, one-of-a-kind design!

Here's the card again:

I used the October Afternoon Farm Fresh fabric on this card, too, with paper from Boarding Pass and Thrift Shop. The Sprinkler I used is the new Hopscotch from the Sidewalks collection.

I hope you'll try making some layered fabric embellishments - it's a great way to make a handmade project even more special!

 

New Fabric in the Spotlight! Plus who'd like a give-away?!

Now annoucing our new fabric!!! Now we have something for all those quilters and sewers. As well as those scrapbookers and cardmakers who love to make their own embellishments. We will not be selling it ourselves but you can purchase it at FatQuarterShop

Here's a sneak...... of the first release is from Farm Fresh

It is available in Cotton and Flannel.

Next line to be released is Fly a Kite.

 

Here are some great projects from our Design Team...

 

From Roree

From Danni

From Me (Jennifer)...

 

 

From Amy

By Vivian

From Lexi

Arn't those super cute projects?!

We hope you're as excited about the fabric as we are. We'll be randomly picking a winner on Monday, Ocotber 3th. The winner will receive a Fat Quarter of all the Farm Fresh patterns!