Layouts based on sketches

Hush little baby

March 27, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I gathered up all my baby dolls one day and created beds for the whole lot.

The photo in this layout makes me laugh because it reveals a little bit about what I was like as a child. My parents had bought something that had packing material in it, and seeing its potential I used it to “build” beds for all my baby dolls. I’m sure I felt very pleased with myself once I had worked out all the necessary design decisions and finally had everyone tucked in for a nap.

Isn’t it wonderful that my mom snapped a shot of this? Thanks Mom!

I used this great sketch provided at the Artful Delight blog to inspire my layout:

Artful Delight sketch

The Mayflower

March 25, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 5 Comments

Our family vacation in 1977 was to tour the New England states in our car.

In the summer of 1977 our family took a car trip through several of the New England states. It was a great vacation, with lots of stops along the way for sight seeing and family bonding time.

I did make the trip a little more difficult on the family than it had to be, though. On the day before we were to get on the road, I went to a school friend’s birthday party. We engaged in a lot of the usual birthday party activities, but then the birthday girl’s older brother suggested that we all play touch football. Huh? A group of 10-year-old girls playing touch football in their bare feet in the near dark? Kind of weird, but we inexplicably decided it was a good idea. The problem is that touch quickly turned to tackle, and I found myself on the ground under the weight of the older brother. When my dad came to pick me up that evening at the end of the party I couldn’t put back on my shoe because my foot had swollen so.

Oh no.

The next morning we left on our trip, but I was in pain. And that pain grew over the next days. My parents finally decided that my foot needed medical attention. So when we reached Poughkeepsie, NY, we spent the day in the hospital emergency room. And I spent the rest of our journey on crutches. That made logistics more interesting, but we got through it and had a great time despite it.

I remember key moments along the trip, like seeing the replica of the Mayflower in Plymouth and visiting Mystic Seaport in Connecticut (where Dad had to hoist me on his shoulders to carry me to the car when a torrential rain started). But one of my best memories on that trip was when we were driving along one day and heard people squealing with delight while playing in a cold stream along the side of the road. We convinced Dad to stop and let us slip and slide around for a little while. It was wonderful, impromptu fun…a perfect childhood moment.

I created my layout above with October Afternoon patterned papers from the Farmhouse collection, followed this great sketch from PageMaps and am entering my page in the PageMaps sketch challenge.

PageMaps sketch

Discus queen

March 24, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

This layout is based on sketch challenge #33 at the My Mind's Eye blog.

Matt’s younger sister, Thyia, competed in the discus and shot put events on her high school track team. Matt tells me that she was so good at these events that she went to nationals and came up against girls in her age range that were 100 pounds heavier than she was…and won! This photo of her is from 1993.

I created this layout for the My Mind’s Eye blog challenge #33, using all patterned papers from various lines of theirs and their sketch .

BFFs from the start

March 3, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

These two random photos of me and my baby brother prove how long we've been BFFs.

I continue to scan, organize and scrap photos from our childhood, and when I was looking through my vintage photos yesterday these two unrelated shots from 1969 lept out at me. They make me SO happy and grateful that Phil and I are so close in age (13.5 months). Look at what good friends we were, even then.

The top photo was taken in our living room in September, and the bottom one was taken on Mom and Dad’s bed in December. Here we are, not quite two and three years old, forming our bond—our lifelong friendship. My relationship with my brother is truly one of my greatest blessings.

I created this layout based on the following fabulous PageMaps sketch and am entering it in their Webster’s Pages sketch contest.

Tickling the ivories

March 1, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 5 Comments

The March Sketches with a Twist sketch and design team sample layouts are now live on their site. I am very proud to have created the sketch and really in love with all the design team’s samples based on it!

Sketches With a Twist is a new sketch challenge site where each comes with an extra requirement (for example, this month’s twist is to use 3 identical embellishments somewhere on your layout or card.

Here’s a little peek at my new sketch:
A peek of the new sketch

And below is my design team layout based on the sketch. Please head to their blog to get the printable version of the sketch and play along (there are two prizes available each month).

In this first photo I was 6 years old, and in the second I was not quite 10.

I was very fortunate that as a child I took piano lessons. My mother had always wanted to know how to play, and I think her enthusiasm for the idea must have made me want to do it, too. When I was really little my parents would walk into a room and find me sitting sideways in an overstuffed chair “playing” the arm. I think they must have told Santa Claus about this because in 1972 he left an electric organ (that’s what they were called then, instead of keyboards) under the tree! Boy howdy, was that a great gift.

The whole family played the organ, but perhaps I played it the most because when, in 1976, my parents finally fulfilled my mom’s dream of owning a piano, I was the first one to get lessons. Eventually Phil and Mom also took piano lessons from my teacher, Alice Shimmels, but I took lessons the longest (until I was 18, I think). Unfortunately, at that point in my life I didn’t think I had time in my busy teenager schedule to continue with lessons and practice, so I let them go.

It’s a lovely thing to have had music lessons in my past; it’s such a great skill to have and is a practice rich with opportunities for developing personal discipline. I now have that piano in my home, and I love to play carols in the winter on a cold evening when I’m full of Christmas spirit. So, another debt of gratitude is owed to my wonderful parents for filling my life with the ability to make my own music.

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