Janice Daquila-Pardo

Young Crafters Unite blog hop!

July 1, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 81 Comments

Hi everyone, and welcome to the next stop on the Young Crafters Unite Blog Hop! If you’re following along the hop you should be arriving here from Chari Moss’ blog (She makes such adorable cards!). If you aren’t a hopper but want to join in the fun you can start at the beginning by visiting the Young Crafters Unite website.

Why do I consider myself a young crafter?

I always feel younger than the calendar says I am. I really believe that being “young” or “old” is up to us. So I act the way I want to feel. And crafting is one of the things I do that helps me stay young. Shopping for crafting supplies surely must reduce wrinkles because it makes me giddy like a little girl. And the feeling I get when I start to cut, stamp and glue things together…well, if my hair was longer I would put it up in pigtails! I suspect all crafters are young crafters. 🙂

My “favorite thing” project

We were asked to create a new project using our favorite things, and I chose to create a layout using two favorite things:

These photos are of my brother, Phil, and me at the baby pool in our hometown. I love everything about these photos: Phil’ls scrunchy smile, our darling bathing suits pushed low on our round bellies, our suntanned skin, our happy faces and my memories of many hours spent at that pool together with our mom. Wow, these are awesome photos!
I recently created a tutorial about crocheting on your scrapbook pages, so that’s my new favorite technique! I’ve used it on this layout to create the sun element. It takes some extra time, so I’ll probably save it for more special photos/memories, but I love the even more handmade and vintage feel it gives to my layouts. 🙂

At the Pool highlights a few special photos of me and my brother in the summer of 1970.

More of my personal favorites

I thought I would also share just a few more of my recent layouts and cards because they are all about being or staying young, and they make me happy to look at!

I think you are…
I made this little set of 2×3-inch cards so that I could occasionally pop a love note in my husband’s laptop bag before he leaves the house. Why does food with faces make us smile?

I think you are...hot, cool, sweet and cheesy!

I am I because my little dog knows me
I can’t help it—I love this layout. That photo of our precious family dog, Spenser, is from 1991 when he was only a few months old. We all adored him and he adored us. And I think this Gertrude Stein quote is awesome.

I think this Gertrude Stein quote is all this layout needed to capture my feeling.

He will go far
This is a photo from 2000, when our nephew Jerad was only 4. I thought this new October Afternoon line, Rocket Age, would work perfectly to highlight all the potential I see in his little face.

This outer space-themed paper just seemed like the perfect way to showcase a child's potential.

Thank you so much for hopping by today. Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post because there are prizes up for grabs for some lucky participants. Randomly selected commenters will have the opportunity to win prizes from Simon Says Stamp, Paper Smooches and Lawn Fawn! Comment by Monday, July 4th at 11:59PM CST to win; winners will be announced Wednesday, July 6th at noon CST.

The next young crafter on this hop is Kelly Latevola (This woman is a master with Distress Inks!). Thanks again for stopping by, and I do hope you’ll come back again soon.

My first guest blog post!

June 29, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Hello, and welcome to my visitors who have come from Live. Teach. Create. I am very excited to be the guest blogger today on Jennifer’s site and so happy to have you here!

If you have arrived here some way other than from Live. Teach. Create., I hope you’ll check out my tutorial there. Here’s a sneak peek:

As a gift to you for coming to my site today I’ve also created a FREEBIE to go with the tutorial. It’s a template to use if you want to create your own crocheted circle on a page. You can download the PDF below. It’s based on my manual trial-and-error version and is designed to save you lots of time. I do hope you find it useful.

Crochet-on-the-page instructions and hole punch template – The Constant Scrapper

I would love to hear your comments—let me know what you think of the tutorial. And I would so love to have you come back and link up any projects you make using this idea.

Happy crafting! 🙂

Snoopy came first

June 29, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I love, love, love using vintage photos from my mom’s attic. The precious ones on this layout are from the late 1960s, when I was a tiny baby and my brother was still baking in Mom’s oven. 😉 They highlight my parents’ relationship with Snoopy, the beagle they adopted before starting to have us kids. You can tell with certainty that they were ready to be parents, can’t you? I mean, just look at how my dad has him swaddled in two of the photos. Darling much?

Mom and Dad had a darling beagle named Snoopy before they started having children. Can you tell they were ready to be parents?

I created this layout based on this sketch that I found at the Sketch Support site.

You can get this sketch at the Sketch Support site.

Here’s to Pat

June 27, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I’m sorry I’ve been absent lately, but I do have a good reason. I have been putting a good deal of crafty and blog-writing time into my first ever guest blog spot! I’m very excited to be appearing as a guest blogger this Wednesday on Live. Teach. Create. I’ve created a tutorial that I hope you’ll check out and use on a future layout.

Don’t worry; I’ll remind you again on Wednesday. 🙂

In the meantime, I’ll share a layout I did a while back about my husband’s stepfather, Pat. He came into Matt’s life when he was about 12 and did a lot to make his life more stable. Though Pat had never been married or a father before, he stepped into a family of five small children who were not happy about having him around and won them over one-by-one. Unfortunately, Pat’s and Sandie’s marriage ended after ten years, but Pat did leave his mark on the family.

I used some rather psychedelic paper for this layout, but I thought it worked well with both the style of the older photo on the left and the colors in the later photo on the right.

So, here’s to Pat.

This layout is in honor of my husband's stepfather, Pat.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

June 22, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #107, and the twist is “time.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch, then create something and link it up! 🙂

Here’s my Design Team layout inspired by the sketch…

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

And now a little background on this layout. When Phil and I started our sophomore year in high school in 1983 we decided to try out for the play and both were granted roles. The play was Charles Dickens’ “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.” It’s a great story, full of villainy and heroism and redemption.

While my role as Miss Ninetta Crummles, The “Infant Phenomenon,” (from Wikipedia: Mr. and Mrs. Crummles’ daughter. She is a very prominent member of the Crummles troupe, and a dancing part is written for her in every performance, even if there is no place for it. She is supposedly ten years old, but is actually closer to eighteen, having been kept on a steady diet of gin to keep her looking young.) was only a small one, I had the first lines of the play. I skipped onto stage and quoted Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day.”

Phil and I had such a great experience that year in the play. The months of after-school rehearsals led to great friendships and wonderful memories. And, in the end, our rendition of Nicholas Nickleby was brilliant!

Here’s a peek at the week’s sketch. I hope you’ll play along.

Here's a peek at the sketch from www.twistedsketches.org

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