The Constant Scrapper

If I'm not scrapbooking I'm thinking about scrapbooking!

Layouts based on sketches

May the road rise up to meet you…

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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:

MayTheRoadRise_JDaquila-Pardo

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.

This freeze-frame moment

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Sketch #90 is now live at the Twisted Sketches blog. For this fun sketch “frame” was the twist. Here’s my interpretation:

FreezeFrame_JDaquila-Pardo

Because I'm really good at faces I've picked out many celebrities in situations where nobody else noticed them.

The journaling on this layout may be hard to read: “I’m really good at recognizing faces. Always have been. I pick out celebrities in places where nobody else has noticed them. And when we watch movies I make it a sort of game to name in which other films or TV shows we’ve seen even the smallest of characters. Matt is always amazed.”

As usual there’s more to this story than I could fit on this layout. The fact is that since I was young I have been very quick to recognize a face if I have ever seen it before. For instance, when I was 9 years old (in 1976) my family, who was flying to California to visit my grandparents, was at the Cleveland airport. We were walking through the terminal when I recognized a man using a pay phone along the opposite wall and told my dad, “That’s Muhammad Ali.” My father didn’t at all think it was him, but I insisted. So we went closer. When we were just several feet away my dad finally agreed that it was the boxing legend. I was too shy to ask for his autograph, so my brother took a pen and our airline ticket envelope over to the man with the phone under his chin and got his signature. Phil has that autograph to this day, which I repeatedly tell him I deserve to have because I was the one who recognized Mr. Ali in the first place! Are you reading this, Phil?

Years later I recognized astronaut and senator John Glenn walking alone out to an airport parking lot. I was traveling with my husband and brother, and Mr. Glenn passed us as we were heading toward the terminal. Matt and Phil had no idea that we had just walked right past a living legend, but I will never forget that moment.

Over the years I have honed these skills so that now I almost instantly recognize/can name actors in shows we watch, no matter where or when I’ve seen them before (and often no matter how little of their faces I can see). Matt loves to pull up the Internet Movie Database to check my work. This little game has become part of the entertainment for us.

I love furr like Goldmember loves gold!

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Sketch #88 is now live at the Twisted Sketches blog. It’s a great sketch, and “soft” is the twist. Here’s my interpretation:

ILoveFurr_JDaquila-Pardo

I love furr like Goldmember loves gooooold!

Do you remember the scene in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” (2002) when Goldmember explains his name? You may be interested in reliving it with me:

One day as I was petting one of our cats I looked off into the distance and said in my best Goldmember voice, “I love fuuuuuuuur!” My husband laughed, and the idea for a layout went into my mental scrapbook vault. The “soft” twist on this sketch gave me the perfect opportunity to use the idea. (Plus, did you notice that I used soft felt letters for the word “furr” in the title?)

Why not head over to the Twisted Sketches blog and play along?

Do a layout of a feeling

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I recently read a touching blog post by photographer Joe McNally. The headline caught my eye—Take a picture of a feeling—and I’m happy I followed that link. McNally describes having the feeling while visiting his aging mother over the holidays that it might be the last time he would see her. Although melancholy, he followed through on this feeling and captured her in photos. His mother passed shortly after that visit.

His article coaches, “Every once in a while, you might get a feeling you need to shoot a picture. I would follow through on those, no matter how awkward, or sad, or inconvenient it might be. Over the years, I’ve made pictures of some feelings. Missed lots of times. Some, though, I still have a picture of, and I’m glad I do. Those pictures, of those feelings, have become my memory.”

Do you take pictures of feelings? I fear the majority of our photos document the facts, like who was at an event and what was served for dinner. And these are obviously important photos to take. But when was the last time you looked through your photos of a family event and were able to really relive the moment because of the emotion you captured? The photos we take because we follow the feeling that the moment is important to capture—as McNally says, in awkward, sad or inconvenient times—are the ones that really capture us. They are the ones that we can stare at. Get lost in. Those are really moments to remember.

To McNally’s urging I add the scrapbooking corollary: Do a layout of a feeling. This may make some layouts more challenging to do because focusing on the feelings that motivated you to take the photos will bring them back—the painful as well as the joyful. But I believe these will be layouts worth the effort.

Emotion can have a powerful impact on memory formation. Following is a layout I did a few years ago about a painful time. Whenever I look at it I find myself taking a deep breath and really remembering, which is important to me because I don’t ever want to forget that feeling and the moment it marked.

EveryTime_JDaquila-Pardo

Do a layout of a feeling

Thank you for the votes

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I just wanted to pop in and share some good news. My Came a cavalier layout was chosen by visitor vote to win a sketch contest at multiphotoscrapbooklayouts.com! I am honored.

Ann is the curator of the multiphotoscrapbooklayouts site and says, “I wanted to provide a blog where scrapbookers like myself could find inspiration to create multi-photo scrapbook layouts without searching aimlessly through pages of one photo layouts.” You’re doing a great job Ann! Thanks for the inspiration and the contest opportunities.