Janice Daquila-Pardo

Capturing a 6-year-old’s amazing day

March 23, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 5 Comments

PROMPT TWO FOR “BLOGGING FOR SCRAPBOOKERS” CLASS

Mom snapped a picture of me the day I came home with my "Student of the Month" pin in first grade.

What do you count among the most amazing days in your life?

Do you have a top-five-best-days-ever (so far) list in your head? So, if I challenged you to name them (or scrapbook them) you would be ready just like that? Or when you think about amazing days, does a different memory pop in each time, making it difficult to name the very best?

What I know is that I’ve had a lot of amazing days so far. And yes, I know I’m blessed. Sure, I’ve had a ton more run-of-the-mill, completely unmemorable days than I have had amazing ones. But how amazing could they be if you had them all the time, right? Even so, I didn’t have a list in my head of which of my many good days would, in fact, qualify as great.

Yet that’s what Shimelle challenged us to do in our second assignment for her “Blogging for Scrapbookers” class. So, I gave myself five minutes to brainstorm a short list (therefore, it’s not at all exhaustive) of those memories that truly flood my heart with warmth:

My wedding day
The day Matt asked me to marry him
Every Christmas when I was a kid
Finally figuring out how to ride a bike
The day I received the letter offering me a full scholarship to grad school
The first day of my college summer internship in NYC
The day we rescued our cat, Oliver, from the middle of traffic on a highway
The summer morning my mom said, “Get up. Let’s go to Sea World today!” for no reason at all
Having my dad ask me to help him Christmas shop for my mom
Singing “Away in a Manger” for the Christmas program in kindergarten
Christmas caroling dressed as Dickens characters with my friends in high school
Picking out our family dog, Spenser, and bringing him home
The first day of rehearsal after being cast in the community theater musical, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
Being named “Student of the Month” in first grade

Every one of these memories deserves its own scrapbook layout, but it’s the last item on this list that I’ve chosen to use as the basis for my assignment:

I loved school from the start. Pretty much everything about it made me happy. Mrs. Slike was a kind yet strict teacher—just what I needed. I liked the order, the little responsibilities, the assigned seats, changing to different subjects throughout the day, raising my hand to answer the teacher’s questions, the approval on the teacher’s face when I got answers right, wearing my uniform, talking to the other kids and learning, learning, learning. I liked walking to and from school with my younger brother (most of the time) and staying after school to clean the blackboards. I even usually liked doing my homework.

You get the idea. I was a school nerd.

On the day of this photo I don’t remember anything special about the school day except that it was our once monthly dress-up opportunity (which is why I’m wearing this navy dress with the doily collar and cuffs—that my mom made for me—instead of my uniform).

But right before the end of the day the principal got on the PA system and announced TO THE WHOLE SCHOOL that I had been selected as the Student of the Month! I was more than excited. Mrs. Slike pinned the SOTM badge on my dress and sent us all home. I was on a cloud.

When I got home, before even taking off my coat, I said to my mom, “Guess who you’re talking to.” She played along and asked, “OK, who am I talking to?” With all the drama in me I threw open my coat and announced, “The Student of the Month, that’s who!”

Of course, Mom and Dad were very proud of me. And thankfully they took this photo to commemorate my moment. I’m not sure of this detail, but I may have insisted on wearing my pin every day of that month.

This was a great day in the life of a six-year-old. But more importantly, it cemented for me very early that hard work gets recognized. And I never looked back.

Paving my way to pastures new

March 21, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

PROMPT ONE FOR “BLOGGING FOR SCRAPBOOKERS” CLASS

I recently decided that because I’m enjoying blogging so much I want to commit more to it. I want to post more often and consistently, and I want to improve on the quality of my posts’ value to my readers. Et cetera.

I just love how after making a decision of this type—even if it’s not that conscious a decision at first—we set our internal filters to assist us in finding what we need to make it happen. So, because I knew I wanted to do something to kick up my blogging a few notches, when I heard about Shimelle Laine’s “Blogging for Scrapbookers” class I immediately recognized the value it could have to my goals and enrolled.

Today is the first day of this three-week online class, and the first assignment is to write about my intentions for the class and my blog. As I said at the beginning of this entry, I want to post more consistently. For instance, I plan to come up with blog topic areas and claim certain days of the week or month for them. You see this all over the craft blogosphere, with names like “Make It Monday,” “Tutorial Tuesday,” or “Watch It Wednesday.” The reason I haven’t scheduled this way for myself is a lack of willingness to openly commit to a schedule I wasn’t certain I would be creative enough to keep (this requires a lot of content creation and discipline). But telling the world you’re disciplined is the first step to being disciplined. So here’s to step one.

I also want to create the kind of content that will inspire comments and interaction from my readers. So I’m on a quest to figure out what that takes.

Mostly I believe that pushing myself to record my memories, think “aloud” publicly, pass on tips and trends when I find them and share my paper-crafting efforts is a fabulous stretch for my creative brain. I want to really flex during this blogging class and hope you’ll enjoy following along.

Hello and welcome to my new readers who have found me because we’re classmates in Shimelle’s course. Thank you so much for coming here, and I’ll be by your blog soon! 🙂

This is my blogging space and a layout I completed about what makes me happy.

May the road rise up to meet you…

March 16, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Sketch #92 on the Twisted Sketches site is available today! The sketch is for one vertical photo, and the twist this time is “brads.” Following is my contribution to the design team layouts that go up for inspiration:

May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

The sketch included a place for a long-ish title, and because this week we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day I thought of using part of an Irish blessing for mine. This is a photo of my baby bro in Central Park when he took a Christmas trip to NYC this past December. I liked the effect of combining this Irish blessing for him with the idea of the road and travel.

To create the patterned paper highlight area behind the photo I cut small strips of travel-themed paper (Wander by BasicGrey) and punched some of them with a postage stamp border punch (Fiskars) and then layered them randomly. The last line of the Irish blessing is written on the ticket to the left of the picture.

I hope the design team’s interpretations of sketch #92 inspire you to use it for one of your photos.

Want a free Silhouette cut file I designed?

March 15, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

I really like the homemade paper-pieced look when I see other scrappers do it, but I don’t usually try that style myself. But this photo and title just screamed to me to give it a try.

I saw a poster a while back that said, “Wherever we are together that is home,” and I bookmarked it in my brain to use when the right photo came along. And then this past weekend I was flipping through a package of my photos and saw this one of my family. It was 1994, and my parents had decided to move from their home of 30 years in Ohio to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Family friends held a going-away party for us, and this photo was taken at the end of it. I thought the story behind this photo fit that poster’s message perfectly.

So I created the title art in the Silhouette Studio software before cutting it twice to use here. If you have a Silhouette (this file will only work on this machine) and would like to use it on a layout of your own, please leave me a comment on this post telling me you’d like it, and I will email it to you. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?

Wherever we are together that is home

I’m really pleased with how this simple design turned out, so I’m sure I’ll find ways to do more with this homey, handmade look in the future.

Great Android photo apps for scrapbookers

March 14, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I read a post on Kristina Werner’s blog where she reviewed a few of her favorite iPhone photo apps. I thought it was great, but I have an Android (which I love). If you have an Android too and would like to have some hip camera apps to use on it, I’ve pulled together my thoughts on a few of the better ones I’ve used (listed in the order of my preference).

I have chosen to include only the free versions of each of these apps, for comparison’s sake. I will point out if there’s a more feature-rich for-pay version, where applicable.

In order to show the differences in the types of photos you’ll get out of each app I have taken the same shot with my HTC Evo’s default camera and then with each app (and several of its filters). In all cases I have left the photos unaltered except for resizing so you can see the images exactly as they came off my phone. This is the original image, taken with the phone’s basic camera app.

The photo as taken with the basic camera app on my HTC Evo

Retro Camera

I really like Retro Camera by Urbian. It takes great old-school pics and has five cameras (the Bärbl, the Little Orange Box, Xolaroid 2000, the Pinhole Camera and FudgeCan) inspired by the Lomo, Holga, Polaroid, Diana, the toy cameras and Hipstamatic. It’s interface is simple and intuitive, and most of the cameras have a black-and-white choice in addition to color. I list it as my first choice here because if you look at the effects each camera produces, there’s a nice variety of choice right here within this one app. I also think Urbian did a nice job on the frames for each. Lastly, notice that this sample Xolaroid 2000 looks much more like a traditional Polaroid photo than the output of the FXCamera later in this article.

A sampling of Retro Camera's effects

Vignette

(full version is $4.06)
Vignette by neilandtheresa is my other favorite camera app in this review. With 68 effects & 56 frames, it creates a ton of retro/vintage styles (LOMO/Diana/Holga toy/Polaroid/cross-process/tilt-shift/photobooth/double exposure and more). There are more choices to make within each effect than in Retro Camera, which makes it a little more complex to learn but richer in features. If I want to have more control I pull up this app.

A sampling of some of Vignette's effects

ActionSnap

ActionSnap by Oursky Ltd. is an app that captures action and then samples it into four frames. The frames can be arranged as 1×4, 2×2 or 3×3, and the time intervals can be set from 0.1s – 5s. Of course, my shot wasn’t ideal for showing off this one, but you can see how the “movement” works. I think this app is a nice addition to your regular camera because of how it handles fast-moving kids and pets. In addition to the LOMO filter, this app also features a sepia filter.

A sampling of ActionSnap's effects

FxCamera

FxCamera by YMST offers some fun effects: ToyCam, Polandroid, Fisheye, SymmetriCam, Warhol as well as Normal. I don’t consider these effects to be as useful as Retro Camera’s, but I suppose that’s personal preference. The resolution of the resulting photos is also lower, which could pose a problem for traditional paper scrappers because we would have to print them at rather small sizes.

A sampling of FXCamera's effects

So if you still use just your Android’s default camera, perhaps it’s time to try one (or more) of these apps to bring some good filtered fun to your next scrapbook layout. If you find other photo apps for Android that you think scrappers would enjoy, please let me know in the comments.

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