Sketches

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.

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.

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