My scrapbook layouts

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.

Leap

February 29, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Twisted Sketches has revealed sketch #141, and the twist is “leap.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch and see all the other design team members’ beautiful examples. Then create something of your own and link it up!

Here is what I created using this great new sketch:

These are photos of me (and friends) during college that illustrate the quote I used as my title.

I just love using short quotes as titles for layouts, so when I saw that the twist on this sketch was “leap,” I went in search of a good quote I could sink my teeth into. I found several that inspired me, but I chose to use this one by David Herbert Lawrence (English writer, 1885-1930) because it also made me think of some old photos I had.
“Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.”

The photos this quote put me in mind of were from my college days. When else in our lives do we so often travel to the edge of knowledge and have to take a leap into our own unknown? The first photo is of my brother, Phil, me and my mom from freshman year. Mom was visiting us for Mother’s Weekend, and we had loads of fun. The second photo is of me with the three roommates I had during a wonderful summer internship program in New York City (lots of learning and leaping!). And the third photo is of me with some friends at the end of our junior year in college.

These are certainly not good photos; in fact they’re pretty terrible. But really, how many photos of you from the 1980s do you love? What’s important to me is that they represent memorable times of growth in my life and help me remember to travel to the edge as often as possible. The edge is uncomfortable and exciting. Sign me up for that!

So, this is my last layout as a design team member for Twisted Sketches. I have been enjoying the challenge of using Anam’s sketches and twists for a little over a year (you can see my very first DT layout here), and the time has just flown. I want to thank Anam for taking a chance on me. She was the first person to make me part of a design team, which means that she and her sketch site will always hold a special place for me. I thank her for believing in my design skills and adding to my confidence.

Old school

February 15, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Twisted Sketches has revealed sketch #139, and the twist is “old.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch and see all the other design team members’ beautiful examples. Then create something of your own and link it up!

Here is what I created using this great new sketch:

I saw this Hot Date collection by KI Memories and immediately wanted to use it to do a layout about my love of fountain pens.

Do you ever create a layout because a certain patterned paper triggers something in your brain? The background paper on my page above was the inspiration for this whole idea. It’s from a Valentine-themed collection called Hot Date by KI Memories, and as soon as I saw the little fountain pens in the design I was committed to creating an ode to fountain pens (mine in particular).

I have loved fountain pens for a very long time. Daddy had a few old ones in his valet tray on the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and I loved to take those out and turn them over in my fingers. They were made of various colored pearl laminates and had lever fillers. They fascinated me with their beauty and old-world functionality. What?! You use the lever to suction special ink into a bladder inside the pen before you can write with it? How could I think that was anything but awesome when all we ever used at school were Bic ballpoint stick pens?

So I carried my love for fountain pens into my adulthood. I even bought a few inexpensive vintage pens at flea markets, but they didn’t work very well. Then one day, in my very first job out of college, my office mate brought a rubber stamp catalog (from Rubba Dub Dub) to work and asked if I wanted to order anything from it. I pored over that book for a long time, loving the idea of rubber stamps but having no concept of how I would use them. But there was a beautiful vintage fountain pen image that won me over. It seemed so expensive to me at the time, but I had visions of using it to create my own stationery, so I bought it.

Fast forward a number of years, and I must have let slip to my new husband how much I loved fountain pens because for one of our first Christmases together (1999) he gave me a gorgeous Mont Blanc. It’s a special edition pen called Hommage à Fédéric Chopin, and it includes a CD of Chopin’s music. I adore writing with it. It feels like you really mean what you’re saying when you write it with this beauty.

As I say in my journaling: I love technology, but old school is so cool.

Austin Gorilla Run

February 13, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

Why would more than a thousand people get up way early on a Saturday morning, pull on gorilla costumes and meet in downtown Austin? To raise money for the highly endangered mountain gorillas of Africa, that’s why!

Now that Matt is running and looking for 5K events to participate in, we are learning about cool events in and around Austin like the Gorilla Run. Registration for this race includes a gorilla suit to make the event and its fundraising efforts more visible.

According to the Austin Gorilla Run site, “Proceeds from the race directly benefit Ugandans, Rwandans and citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo in veterinary educational training, with the end goal of protecting the highly endangered Mountain Gorillas in Africa. In 1987 there were only 248 mountain gorillas alive in the world, but through the veterinary and conservation efforts of the MGCF, the population has nearly tripled to 720.”

It was such a cold morning! But the reason for the event and the many funny and creative costumes that people wore over their gorilla suits made waiting a little easier and a lot more entertaining. Matt ran a great race (only his second so far), and he had a great time.

Matt and a few thousand others donned a gorilla suits and ran a 5k to raise money for mountain gorillas.

I created this title treatment as my only embellishment on this layout.

This is a close-up shot of the title treatment I created in the Silhouette software.

The photo of Matt on the far right of the right-hand page is courtesy of Austin Outdoor Photography.

Promises to keep

February 1, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #137, and the twist is “promise.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch and see all the other design team members’ beautiful examples, then create something of your own and link it up!

Here is what I created using this great new sketch:

These random photos of my dad are from 1964, 1971, 1988 and 2003.

My father loved the English language and literature, which he studied in college so that he could teach. Although he did teach for a few years right out of college, he decided that after he and Mom married and had two children in quick succession, raising a new family on teachers’ salaries was just too difficult. So he found another career that could change their fortunes.

But Daddy was always my literature teacher. He loved to quote poetry and lines from plays. Some nights after dinner our family played a game where Phil and I would pull out the dictionary and try to find words that would stump him, but Dad’s vocabulary was exceptional, so it hardly ever happened.

My father instilled in me love for our language and awe in the effect good writing can have on our emotions, beliefs and dreams. It’s for this reason that I created this layout, and the line I used as the title comes from the following poem by Robert Frost, a favorite of Daddy’s:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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