Sketches

Just me and the open road

July 2, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

When a kid has a bike, everything changes.

This is the first week Creative Scrappers is revealing the work of their new sketch artists and design teams. Sketch #215 is a great one created by Jenny Evans, and I decided to play along with it to celebrate with my new team members.

My journaling on this layout reads:
“What a 6-year-old girl knows about her world changes once she a gets a bike. Pre-bike all I knew of my hometown I saw from a moving car or on walks with my parents. But once Santa left me a beautiful blue vehicle of discovery under the Christmas tree my world expanded. Willoughby was mine!”

Product/technique notes: I pulled together this sweet little summer page using patterned papers from Simple Stories’ Summer Fresh collection and that cool building paper from Studio Calico’s Abroad collection.

The Lord God made them all

June 2, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 15 Comments

It’s already time for the June Sketches With a Twist challenge—the last design of my term with them. I am very proud to have created this sketch, although I’ll admit that it’s a little harder than usual, which is why I’ve included a tutorial below for making the Cathedral Window quilt pieces! Here’s a little peek at my new sketch:

The twist this month is to incorporate fabric into your design. I’m not a seamstress (yet), so I used felt! Felt is fabric, isn’t it? 😉

Every animal we have rescued stays in my heart.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
~Cecil F. Alexander, Hymns for Little Children, 1848

Matt and I are rescuers. Animals in need find us, and we can’t turn away. It’s added a lot of joy to our lives to open ourselves to this avocation. And of course, with the joy comes a bit of pain because not all our rescues can be saved. As in most things that matter, though, the joy makes the pain worth enduring.

This layout features photos of just three of the animals we’ve helped:

The possum we named Head (after a character with a large head in So I Married an Ax Murderer). Sadly, Head was too injured by the car that hit him, and he did not make it.
The chicken Matt rescued from Mopac Highway and was promptly named…Mopac…before we found her a home on a little farm in Buda, Texas.
And the German short-haired pointer who we named Budro (for the dog in Grosse Pointe Blank) before placing him with the local German short-haired pointer rescue group.

My layout is intended to celebrate all the animals we’ve rescued and to symbolize the way they each add themselves to the quilt of our lives.

The tutorial

So you think this sketch looks intimidating? I’m here to help! After creating my layout with this sketch, I realized that I could probably help others use it if I revealed a few of the measurements and techniques I used.

The three photos on this sketch are 3 inches from corner to corner, not 3 inches square. A square that measures 2⅛ will have a diagonal measurement of 3 inches, so that’s the size to which you should crop your photos.

For the nine Cathedral Window quilt pieces you see on the sketch, you’ll need to punch either nine 3-inch circles of double-sided patterned paper OR nine 3-inch circles of single-sided patterned paper and nine 2-1/16-inch squares of different patterned papers. I wanted all my folded pieces to be the same pattern, so I used the second method for my quilt pieces.

Here's a template for the Cathedral Window quilt pieces you'll need to cut.

Place your 2-1/16-inch squares centered on your circle and score around the outside edges. Once you fold up the four edges you’ll have a 2⅛-inch square quilt piece.

Here is a template I created to help you place your quilt pieces (if you want to follow the sketch exactly). I used these measurements, and everything lined up just right! Click on this smaller image to download the full-sized version.

I really hope this tutorial is helpful to those of you who want to use my sketch. I am very happy with how my layout looks, so I hope you’ll try it with a few of your photos, too. And don’t forget to link up your page to the Sketches With a Twist challenge.

You know I read it in a magazine

May 7, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

These photos were taken at Ohio University in 1989.

Not only did my younger brother, Phil, and I start school in the same year, which led to us travelling through grade school and high school together as though we were twins, but also we elected to go to the same university for the same major! Yessir, we both packed up our things and went to Ohio University for journalism degrees. And once we had been there long enough to figure out which kind of journalism we wanted to specialize in, we both chose the magazine track.

So after studying the principles and ethics of journalism for four years, we were thrilled to have a course in our senior year that ~~allowed~~ forced us to craft our own magazines. Each student had to come up with a concept for a magazine that didn’t already exist, write the business plan for it and then create a prototype of the premiere issue. What a dream project for a couple of magazinophiles.

Phil’s magazine for billiards enthusiasts was called “Blue Chalk.” My magazine for comedians was called “Stand-Up.” We had to mock up articles, ads…the whole magazine experience. It was hard work and exhilarating. But we both felt quite proud of our final projects. In fact, Phil’s book won a contest with a cash award from Writer’s Digest and Folio Magazine!

These photos were taken just after the ceremony where Phil received his award. And the bottom photo is of Phil and our friend, Rich, who was listed in “Blue Chalk” as publisher.

Here is the PageMaps sketch I followed for this layout, and I’m entering it into their sketch contest:

Product/technique notes: All the papers and stickers I used on this layout are from Echo Park’s Note To Self collection. I should also give credit where it’s due: Phil suggested the title I used on this page. 🙂

Together in PJs

May 4, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Journaling: These darling shots of Phil and me are from 1972 (L-May; R-March). I remember that I loved wearing my square-dancing nightgown.

Here's a close-up shot on the pinwheel embellishment and title tag.

If you read the title of my post (and my layout) and heard strains of Neil Diamond’s “Forever in blue jeans,” you’re my kind of person! When I was working on this page about my baby bro and me in these sweet, random 1972 photos of us in our pajamas, that’s what popped into my head…so I went with it.

Sometimes when I get to the titling part of the scrapping process, I falter. It’s not always easy to come up with clever, pithy titles that are understandable without being too obvious/boring. It’s a tall order! So, while I’m talking to myself in my scrap room (oh, please don’t try to tell me you never do that), I start hearing song lyrics, movie quotes and lines from books that I might bend to my purpose.

And that’s how “Forever in blue jeans” became “Together in PJs.”

The hope is, of course, that even without benefit of this type of explanation, people who see this layout will either “hear” my intention on their own when they read the title, or the title will be strong enough to stand on its own even if nobody “hears” the melody with me.

How do you come up with titles for your pages? I would love to have more strategies at hand for this task. Won’t you leave me a comment with your tips?

I created this page with the help of this lovely sketch from PageMaps and am entering it in their sketch challenge.

Product/technique notes: Did you notice the man-in-the-moon image in these patterned papers from We R Memory Keepers Anthologie line? It made this the perfect choice for vintage photos about children and bedtime.

I’m lucky to have a friend like you

May 1, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

Happy May Day! The May Sketches With a Twist sketch and design team sample layouts are now live on the blog. I am very proud to have created the sketch and really love all the design team’s samples based on it! Here’s a little peek at my new sketch:

The twist this month is to incorporate hand or machine stitching into your design. So I did a running stitch around the edge of my title treatment, which set it off nicely. You know, I don’t often use word/sentiment stamps on my layouts (like I mean to do when I buy the stamps), but as I was working on this page my glance just happened to fall on the Hello Friend stamp set from Lawn Fawn, and it really was perfect for my subject! So the lesson here, boys and girls, is that there are benefits to having a messy scrap space. 😉

I created sketch #5 for Sketches With a Twist, on which this layout is based.

Kathy was my best friend for several years in grade school. We were in classes together, in the same Girl Scout troop and spent nights over at each other’s houses. She was the kind of friend that I could be my nerdy self with and not feel nerdy. She was fun, kind, studious and athletic.

Out of all the time we spent around each other, it’s little tidbits that leap to mind when I think of her. Like the time we sat under a tree and drew our versions of our future dream homes. Or when we went shopping at the mall together, and even though she was a head taller than me (lucky girl), we insisted on buying the same exact outfit and wearing them on the same day. That had to have been hilarious to our families! Or when she showed me her new Loverboy Get Lucky album, (the one released in 1981 with the red leather pants and the crossed fingers) and that made her even cooler in my eyes.

Well, after grade school Kathy and I attended different high schools and then went off to different universities, so we didn’t see each other for years. We all know how that happens. But after college we reconnected by attending each other’s weddings, which was wonderful, and we send birthday and Christmas cards. But recently I had the opportunity to spend an entire day with Kathy and her family. Her younger sister, Jean, recently moved to San Antonio, which isn’t far from Austin. So when Kathy’s family flew in to spend spring break with Jean’s family, Matt and I made plans to head to San Antonio for a visit.

We had a wonderful day together. We all went to the Poteet Strawberry Festival, which is a huge event in the SA area. It was a hot, sweaty, windy day, which is why we look a bit disheveled in these photos. But it was just so nice to catch up! You know, a lot changes about people and their lives over the years, but a lot stays just as it is in grade school, too. Kathy is the same kind of person she was back when: she’s fun; it’s obvious she’s a kind and generous mother to her two girls and wife to Wray; and she cares passionately about doing her work well. She’s a very good person, and I am lucky to have a friend like her.

I hope you’ll head to the Sketches With a Twist blog to get the printable version of my sketch and play along (there are two prizes available each month).

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