October Afternoon

Thursday Sketch: Building Blocks

Hi everyone, Mou here with today's sketch! Once I put the sketch together, it started to look like little building blocks that kids play with. Start with these basic blocks and go as far as you like with embellishments.

 

Here's my layout. I started with a kraft cardstock. Then chose patterned papers from Daily Flash Girl Talk: Dish, Chatter, Giggle, Gossip and Saturday Mornings Scones. I arranged the base layer on white cardstock following my sketch. Just like interlocking building blocks, I cut into my patterned papers following the outlines of images and tucked the photo in. Next, I cut out some images from the patterned papers and used them to embellish. One of the patterned paper cutouts also became my page title. Couple of  Treasure Map Label Stickers to journal on and I had a fun layout all done.

Here's a close-up of my layout.

Today, I have Roree with me and here's her beautiful and clean card take on my sketch.

Roree says: "For Mou's sketch, I created a card using the new Summertime collection. I used the B-side of the Backyard Lights patterned paper for the background of my card and the Puffy Clouds patterned paper (both sides) in place of the color-block row in the sketch to create a little sunshine scene. I added a sentiment from a Memory Cards for the title and replaced the journaling block in the sketch with a bow and tag created from a Little Labels sticker. I dressed up the tag with a heart sticker from the Double Take Stickers pack and a Pop Drop from the Daily Flash Apple Cider collection. Thanks for the fun sketch, Mou!"

 

 

Here's a closer look at Roree's lovely and bright card!

I hope you guys find my sketch useful for one of your projects too! Thanks for stopping by. 

Tuesday Inspiration

Hey, everyone! Roree here with a little inspiration for you this fine Tuesday.

I found this fun image on Pinterest while surfing around the site one day:

I was totally inspired by the layout of the title and chose to create a similar kind of title on my card.

I created a fun card for summer with products from the new Summertime collection. I used the Sunshine and Green Grass patterned papers, along with Double Take Stickers. I also used the Strawberry Ice Cream Sign Board Alphas from Daily Flash and a button from the Midway collection. 

Don't you just love those gorgeous colors! Such a sweet new collection!

Mou played along with me this week and created this sweet card:

"I loved the inspiration piece Roree chose. The first things that stood out to me were the blue, the orange and the whale. I knew I'd find those colors and patterns in the Treasure Map collection. I used the wave pattern from the Hangman's Cove paper for my card base and cut a whale out of Moby Dick Isle. My card came together with a few Flash Alpha Orange Soda stickers and Apple Cider Pop Drops from Daily Flash collection and Index Card Mini Market stickers from Public Library along with a little decorative stitching."

Isn't Mou's card just adorable?!  I love it!

If today's inspiration piece 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: Camera Collection

Hi there! Happy Tuesday! Emily here with today's inspiration piece! I usually spend a long time finding the perfect inspiration piece for the Tuesday challenge. This week, well, honestly, I opened up my Pinterest app, saw this photo, and knew it was perfect. It took about seven seconds. ;)

(Source)

I love so much about this room. The cameras on the wall, the rows of shelves, the square album storage, etc. This isn't the type of inspiration I usually choose, but so many different ideas jumped out at me! I sent this image on to the super talented Roree to see what she could come up with.  I have a bit of a crush on Roree and just about every card she makes, and I knew that she would make something fabulous. I was right! 

Roree says, "What a fun and inspiring piece! I just love the symmetry of the like items on the shelves in the photo, so I decided to create a similar symmetry on a card using the Treasure Map collection. I chose the Moaning Cavern patterned paper for my background and lined a Tin Pin and circle die cuts from the Sew Fun Banners pack to create my rows. I dressed up the die cuts with buttons from Midway and Witch Hazel, along with a chipboard star from Daily Flash and a sentiment from the Treasure Map Tidbits pack. I framed it all up with a Treasure Map Border Sticker and a little bit of machine stitching."

The first thing I noticed in the image was the camera collection. I have to be honest, while I always love all the cute camera embellishments out there, I am never quite sure how to just slap a camera on my layout and make it look natural...so I had a whole bunch of unused chipboard and sticker cameras just begging to be put on this layout!  I chose five different cameras and staggered them to the right of my photo. One might think this would be an easy task, but I think I pushed them around for about fifteen minutes before I was happy!  Because the cameras didn't fit perfectly together, I included a few hearts and other elements in the open spaces. I used foam tabs to raise some of them up to create some dimension. It's a fairly simple layout, but I felt that adding much more would make it look cluttered...well, more cluttered than it already is!

I would love to see how you are inspired by this image! Upload your layout 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!

Monday Challenge: Shape it up

Hello!

It's Laura here today and I'm happy to be here sharing some cards with you today, and a challenge.  I never need an excuse to make a card, I just love creating them.  Layouts can take me awhile to do, and sometimes I just need to sit down and create something from start to finish in a shorter time period and fill my creative soul up.  Cards are prefect for that :)  I just love making shaped cards, it's such a pleasant surprise to see when you open the envelope up to one.  So I thought I would issue the challenge to create a shaped card, or if you are strictly a scrapbooker, then create a shaped layout.  I'm thinking a circle shaped page, or scalloped edges, etc.  Whatever inspires you!

Here is the card that I made today, I went with a classic star shape.  I created the card with a thin die, and knowing I wanted to have different patterned papers on it, I simply cut out multiple stars in different paper.  Then when I turned those into strips I knew they would have the edges perfect and I would have to fussy cut them off or anything.  

I love love love the new Treasure Map line, it is just so perfect for this boy momma.  I am forever making boy cards for all the birthday parties they go to and thought this would be a cute them for that.  It's not exactly a birthday card yet, but when I know who it's going to I'll add a sentiment on the inside that says something like "Happy Birthday, eat your cake and walk the plank!".  Perfect boy humour.  hehe

I really liked that skull sticker, and to give him a little more life I added black enamel dots to his eyes, and a start sticker with a yellow dot on it over the side of his head.  Then I added some Glossy Accents to the sword for some shine and dimension. 

I am happy yo have Roree with me today, and share her super adorable card with you all.  I mean really, it's just so so cute!

Here is she had to say:

I love to create shaped cards, so I was excited to accept Laura's challenge. I thought about a lot of different shapes that would work well with the new Treasure Map collection, and I finally decided on a whale. (My decision was primarily based on the cute whale sticker from the Treasure Map Shape Stickers sheet. Adorable!!!) I cut my whale out using my Cricut Explore machine and B is for Boy cartridge. I used the Hangman's Cove and Shipwreck Cove patterned papers and a Tidbit label, along with a Milk Money Pop Drop heart, a Woodland Park Button, and sentiment stamped from the Daily Flash Summer Catch-Phrase Stamps

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you feel inspired by this challenge, and get crafting. Please share your projects on our Flickr group, and use the hashtag #octoberafternoon on other social media platforms so we can see all your awesome designs!  I love seeing all the creative things you guys do.

I hope you have a great day!

Laura :)

Thursday Sketch

Hey, everyone! Roree here with today's Thursday sketch!

Playing around in Photoshop, I came up with this:

This sketch was originally designed for a 4 1/4 x 5 1/2" card, but you can easily adjust it for a square card, or you could pop a few photos into the design and use it for a layout—whatever works best for you!

I created a card with the new Treasure Map collection.

I decided to flip the sketch upside down and I replaced the lines with waves from the Whale Bone Reef patterned paper. 

I added a star sticker from the Shape Stickers sheet and a Pop Drop from Daily Flash's Apple Cider collection.

I finished with a sentiment sticker from the Word Stickers sheet cut into two pieces and embellished them with two Buttons from Woodland Park.

Laura played along with my sketch this week and here is her amazing card:

"I just loved the cute simple sketch that Roree made, and it just so happened that a box of Treasure Map showed up on my door step the same day I was set to make my card.  So the first thing I did was to pull out that adorable star patterned paper and use that to cover my card front.  I decided to still keep the 3 sentiment rows from the sketch, but instead of strips, I used label stickers on one side in the colours of the stars on the paper.  I kept things simple, and only added a few additional star stickers and pop drops for embellishments.  I didn't have a red pop drop left so I used a copic marker to color one to match."

Isn't it the cutest?!  I just love it!

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!

Topic Tuesday: Feeling Lucky?

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

This week's Topic Tuesday prompt, appropriately, focuses on luck:  What is your view of luck? How do you define it? Based on this definition, do you consider yourself lucky? 

Roree and I used these questions as a springboard for our projects, working in some St. Patty's green along the way and mixing old and new October Afternoon collections. In thinking about the prompt, Roree was inspired to create this lovely card: 

Roree explains: 

""I view luck as a circumstance of chance. Sometimes your luck can be good, sometimes it can be bad. Either way, it is something that you have no real control over. I do feel like I have been lucky in my life, especially in love. I have been with my husband for almost 25 years, married for almost 22 those, and I am still madly and deeply in love with him. (And I think he still feels the same way about me too!)

This feeling of luck inspired me to create a love-themed, St. Patrick's Day-inspired card just for him. I used patterned papers from the Farm Girl (for the lucky die cut) and Witch Hazel (for the stripes and clover) collections, along with Milk Money Pop Drops and letter stickers from Daily Flash. It's the perfect sentiment to let him know just how much I love him."

The recipient of this card is most definitely one lucky guy! 

My thoughts on the prompt led me to create a layout that features a photo collage documenting the evidence of how lucky I am. 

...Or am I not lucky, but blessed? The journaling works through this question. 

Among the layers of this page, I incorporated a variety of colors and patterns, all of which pick up the colors in the photo collage. The backdrop for the layout is the B-side of an uncut "Journal Cards" sheet from the Saturday Mornings collection. I included some Miscellany, Wild Cards, and accents from various October Afternoon collections, such as Daily Flash, Road Map, Report Card, 9 to 5, Cakewalk, and Schoolhouse. As a finishing touch, I added a few stamped sentiments, using the "Everyday" Daily Flash roller stamp. 

So how about it? Feeling lucky? We'd love to see your take on this week's Topic Tuesday prompt! Link us up in the comments below and/or share your projects in the OA Flickr gallery. 

Thanks for visiting today! 

-- Jill 

Saving | Designer Inspiration

Hey, everyone! Roree here with this week's Designer Inspiration post.

I don't have an inspiration photo to share with you today. Today's inspiration is all about an idea—SAVING. This was the design team's theme for the week, and it really is quite appropriate with Daylight Savings Time taking effect this past Sunday. The theme was open to interpretation, and here is how I interpreted it:

I wanted to make a card (no shocker there!), so what better type of card to make with a saving theme in mind than a "Save the Date" card! I used Daily Flash's Girl Talk (Dish, Giggle, and Blah, Blah, Blah) and All Boy (No Girls Allowed) patterned papers, along with my Cricut Explore and Live Simply and Doodlecharms cartridges, to create this sweet announcement card. 

I chose the "Shop Font" Alpha in Strawberry Ice Cream from Daily Flash for the title.

Then, I framed the date, created with a label from Public Library's Label Sticker sheet and Daily Flash's "Story Book" Alpha in Meringue, with two love birds and Buttons from the Midway collection.

Aren't those little birds just the cutest?! I love them!

If today's inspiration theme 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!

 

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!

Inspiration | October Afternoon

Hi, everyone! Roree here with this week's inspiration post.

So very often when doing an inspiration post, I head straight to Pinterest. With so many ideas at your fingertips, it is THE go-to place for inspiration. But this week, I decided to look for inspiration a little closer to home. October Afternoon has the cutest products on the market and I just love each and every collection they come out with. The new Saturday Mornings collection is no different and that is where I found this weeks inspiration piece.

I fell in love with the Omelette patterned paper as soon as I saw it. The retro images of children watching Saturday morning cartoons took me right back to those early Saturday mornings when I was little. I was so inspired by the old-timey televisions sets, that I decided to make this card:

I cut out a retro TV image with my Cricut Explore and Nifty Fifties cartridge using some brown cardstock and the Pancakes and Crepes patterned papers, adding the darling bear sticker from the Shape Stickers sheet under the top cut.

I added two buttons from the Midway Buttons pack for the TV knobs.

Then, I finished the card with some sentiments from the Word Stickers and Border & Label Stickers sheets, a die cut heart, and a heart sticker from the Daily Flash Snapshots Double Take Stickers pack.

It's just a fun little shaped card with a bit of a masculine feel—perfect for a little "Love Letter" to your valentine. ;)

If today's inspiration piece 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. Have a great week!