Janice Daquila-Pardo

Sketches for Scraps Thursday: Easter duds

May 12, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I found a sketch by Shimelle that I just love for using up some of our patterned paper scraps. It’s for one photo, and I like its versatility for embellishing.

Find this sketch at http://www.shimelle.com/paper/949/scrapbooking-sketch-of-the-week/

Here is the layout I completed with it, all from scraps 6×6 or smaller.

My mom is an excellent seamstress and made many an outfit for me, including this tulip dress for Easter 1990

It’s a photo of my family (sans Dad, the photographer) right after Easter Mass in 1990.

It’s one of those photos that was taken from too far away and includes distracting background details. But I love it because it reminds me of important things. Like that my Mom, who is an excellent seamstress and has made me many, many special outfits over the years, made the dress I’m wearing in this photo. The fabric featured bright-colored tulips scattered across a black background. I wore that thing to death because I really felt good in it and loved that it was homemade.

I also like that Phil, having fun being a bit uncooperative, insisted on eating his after-church snack even though I’m sure my mom moaned at him to get rid of it. And don’t you love to be reminded of the cars your family drove at certain periods?

Yeah, this photo isn’t good; it’s great. Because technically good photos just cannot trump great memories.

I made it + I mailed it

May 10, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 7 Comments

I really don’t make cards often enough!

I think I usually have so many scrapbook layouts planned in my head that I don’t pause from those often enough to whip up something different. Honestly, I’m also intimidated by the small size of cards compared to my usual 12 x 12 layouts. There’s very little real estate to work with, so I feel that every detail has to be right to make it work.

But I really need to change that because this was fun!

I stepped out of my comfort zone to make this card so that I could participate in Lisa Spangler’s “Make-It + Mail-It” challenge. I mailed it off to an old friend of mine who gets my corny side and will appreciate my silly pun. 🙂

My card for Lisa Spangler's "Make-It + Mail-It" challenge

Thanks, Lisa, for motivating me to make a friend a card. Orange u sweet!

Celebrating mother, maman, mommy, amma, mama

May 8, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Twisted Sketches blog is celebrating the achievement of its 100th sketch today, and so the whole design team has done layouts about the concept of “celebration.” I could think of nothing more deserving of celebration today than my mother.

This layout is dedicated to all those little idiosyncrasies that make a loved one even more dear to us. Just a few (I don’t want to make her too uncomfortable when she reads this!) of my mom’s quirks include:

very animated story telling (see the photos below)
acting as if she didn’t hear what you said so she can repeat your words back to you, twisted into something funny
believing it’s wasteful of time to be early to anything
loving when family members poke fun at her and urging them to do it more

I love you Mom! And I wish we could be together today.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Here is sketch #100, on which my layout was based. But I urge you to go to the Twisted Sketches site to play along this week because there’s a $25 prize up for grabs!

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This is sketch #100 from www.twistedsketches.com

And now are you game for a tiny bit of education about the word “mama?” I found a short article that explains why sounds close to “mama” appear in so many languages (link removed due to site having been hacked) and thought you might enjoy it.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

The subtle science and exact art of letter writing

May 5, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 8 Comments

While I didn’t get up at an obscene hour last Friday to watch the royal wedding, I’m a romantic, so I did follow along throughout the day watching and reading about it.

Everything was beautifully orchestrated and everyone was gorgeous. But it wasn’t the spectacle of the event that drew me so much as the opportunity to immerse myself in this great celebration of love. Who among us can see a couple like William and Catherine, young and in love, and not feel our hearts swell?

How often do we have the opportunity to share a grand display of love? Well, certainly shutting down an entire country’s economy for the day and globally televising our declarations of love aren’t in the cards for most of us, but there is a small yet very meaningful gesture available to us any day. It’s the love letter.

Watching William and Catherine vow to love and honor each other all the days of their lives made me itchy to share some mushy sentiments with my husband.

Advice for the love(letter)lorn

But have you attempted to write a love letter? It’s daunting trying to translate those kinds of emotions into words! We can’t all be Victor Hugo:
“My adorable and adored: I have been asking myself every moment if such happiness is not a dream. It seems to me that what I feel is not of earth. I cannot yet comprehend this cloudless heaven. My whole soul is yours…”

Wow, would I love to be able to write this way! Fortunately, there are people through the ages who have excelled at just that. We all like to take inspiration from other artists’ work, so let’s take a look at a few resources that showcase letter-writing artists:

Perhaps these wonderful love letters—of all styles—can help start your words flowing. Keep in mind, though, that the most important element of a good love letter is that it contain honest words from your heart. The rest is gravy.

Of course, my medium of choice for this billet-doux was a scrapbook layout. Although my words are not going to go down in the history books for their style, my hope is that the substance will be always inked on Matt’s heart.

This love letter to my husband is meant to remind him of what I cherish about us.

How can you resist?

April 27, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 7 Comments

Twisted Sketches launches its 98th sketch today, and the twist this time is “paint.” The sketch and the design team’s interpretations are awaiting you at Twisted Sketches’ site…and here is my design team contribution using the new sketch:

That's me, wearing Daddy's clip-on sunglasses and enjoying the Ohio sunshine.

This is the sketch:

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Twisted Sketch #98 calls for 2 photos

For the “paint” twist I was inspired to try a resist technique on the talk bubble using white shimmer paint. I have done resist techniques with ink and embossing powder before but had not yet tried paint resist, so I thought I would show a quick step-by-step just in case it might inspire you to try it on a future layout.

Gather your supplies: Acrylic paint, rubber stamp, Distress Inks and foam applicators.
This technique doesn't take much in the way of supplies.
Apply paint (shimmer paint in my example) to the stamp image and stamp it carefully (don’t smear it) on a spare bit of cardstock.
Immediately take your rubber stamp to a sink and clean it well with soap and water. It’s best not to let the acrylic paint dry on the stamp as it may be harder to remove.
If you’re patient wait until the paint thoroughly dries. If not, hit it with your heat tool for a minute or two.
Start applying the Distress Inks with a circular motion and blend your colors a little where they meet. I used the three colors shown in the photo, but of course there are no rules about how many you use.
Slightly mist a paper towel with water and gently buff off the extra ink from the painted areas to reveal the true color!

Here is a close-up of the final effect. I think I like it!

This close-up photo shows how the shimmer paint resisted the inks.

If you decide to try this quick technique after reading my post, ~~have your people call my people~~ please leave a comment and a link so I can see what you’ve done!

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