Theme and Un-Theme with October Afternoon

Last week, October Afternoon posted a challenge on its blog to use one of its lines two ways: make a project that follows the theme of that line and make another project with the same line that does not follow the theme. OA dubbed this challenge: theme/un-theme and I decided to play along.

I was so excited this past Christmas when October Afternoon surprised us and came out with a holiday line. Yay! I bought it right up! I love Christmas and I love OA, so it worked out perfectly.

One of my favorite things about October Afternoon is that the B sides of the paper are so versatile. As much as I love the A sides, I confess that I use the B sides a lot. And the un-themed B sides of Holiday Style were perfect for this challenge.

For the theme/un-theme challenge, I used the A sides of Holiday Style to make a Christmas card and the B sides of the same line to make a Valentine card, repeating the stripe paper on both cards.

To make the Santa card, I layered 2 sheets of patterned paper together to make a card front, then added a strip of Holiday Style trim and a chipboard button along the bottom. I used a journaling card in the upper right to add a pop of color, then added the Santa icon from the Miscellany pack on top.

To make the Valentine, I hand-drew a dragonfly shape on cardstock, then covered it with patterned paper. To make the antennae, I stiffened twine with a glue gel medium and wrapped the twine around a pencil to get the curlicue shape.

Want to play along?  You can find out more about October Afternoon's theme/un-theme challenge on its blog here.