American Crafts

The significance of stories in our lives

April 13, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Twisted Sketches launches its 96th sketch today, and the twist this time is “card.” The sketch and the design team’s interpretations are awaiting you at Twisted Sketches’ site…and here is my design team contribution using the new sketch:

When we found this 1886 copy of "Sense and Sensibility" at a used book store we had to buy it!

I started with the “twist” when deciding what to scrap for this one. “Card” gave me a little trouble, I don’t mind telling you. Then it hit me—library card! So I took photos of the front pages of this wonderful old book Matt and I recently purchased at a used book store and told its story on my layout. (Notice the patterned paper with the bonnets and top hats on my layout. I couldn’t wait to pull that out and use it for this theme.)

The story

Matt and I met in Chapel Hill, NC, in February 1996. Our first date included a lovely dinner at Aurora (a restaurant that sadly is no more) and then a movie at the old Carolina Theater (also sadly gone and converted into a Gap store—surely the world needed another of those rather than a 63-year-old treasure of a theater!).

We had such an evening. Sigh.

The movie we saw that night was “Sense and Sensibility.” It was very romantic. I was already a Jane Austen fan at that point in my life, but Matt was unsurprisingly unaware of her gifts. In my experience men tend to need an introduction to Miss Austen by a female who either already matters to them or to whom they want to matter. 😉 Let me just say that if you have a romantic bone in your body and you haven’t yet see this one, please do yourself the favor.

Fast forward 15 years, and Matt and I were recently perusing the rare book room at one of the Half Price Books locations in Austin when I spied an old copy of “Sense and Sensibility” on the shelf! It’s an 1886 copy—125 years old—and in rather good shape. Of course we bought it. I think we can be said to have just enough sense and sensibility to know when to grab up something with that kind of significance!

How to use a movie poster as scrapbook inspiration

February 21, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

After seeing the movie “Julie & Julia” in 2009—which intertwines the story of Julia Child’s start in the cooking profession with blogger Julie Powell’s challenge to cook all the recipes in Child’s first book—I received Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” for Christmas. There’s a scene in the movie where Julie Powell has to cook dinner for a special guest and chooses to make Boeuf Bourguignon. Matt and I decided that would be the first dish we would try.

Let me tell you, you don’t just make Boeuf Bourguignon one day after work. This recipe takes several hours and requires some special ingredients that most of us don’t normally keep in our pantries. In our house when we undertake a project like that, we take photos.

My process

Julie & Julia movie poster When I was ready to scrap these photos I already knew what I wanted to title my layout. So I decided to look to the movie art for inspiration. First I looked up “Julie & Julia” on IMDB and thought the title treatment on the movie poster was something I could work with. I could cut out the title with my Silhouette, but what were those fonts?

So I searched on “what fonts are used on julie & julia poster?” and the most helpful result I found was on FontFeed. This site identified the two fonts used as Didot for the words Julie/Julia and Bernhard Modern for the ampersand. The problem was that I didn’t have either of those fonts, and I couldn’t find them on any free font sites.

Then I did another search for “fonts similar to Didot” and found identifont.com, where you can find lists of fonts that are similar to the one you’re looking for. Following this site’s recommendations I found replacement fonts within those that I already owned and I was able to go to town setting up my cut files in the Silhouette Studio software.

I decided to base my color scheme on the movie poster as well. Black and green factor heavily in what makes this poster pop, so I tried to use those colors. I found the perfect paper in my stash that combined the black and green from the poster as well as the red and gold in my photos. From all that came this layout. Bon appetit!

You cannot win if you do not play

November 23, 2010 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

For a long time I’ve been a lurker online. I read blogs and shook my head, laughing at the funny things other crafters said. But I didn’t comment. I read product reviews and agreed or disagreed with the analysis. But I didn’t drop the reviewer a line about my opinion. I learned about scrapbook and card challenges and toyed with the idea of participating. But I didn’t send in my layouts for consideration.

However, with the start of this blog I decided that had to change. I had to stop lurking and start speaking up. And I admit that’s challenging for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned to my husband, Matt, at his computer and told him what I thought of things I had read online. And after patiently (usually) listening to my diatribe, he would often say, “You should be blogging this stuff. Or at the very least you should comment on that person’s post.” At the mention of sharing my thoughts publicly I usually just turned back to my computer to read more of what others had written.

When it comes to the challenges and contests I really just haven’t thought I could compete with all the talent out there in the world. There are so many amazing layouts being posted every single day! But that was just a lame excuse for not having to expose myself to critique—or worse, to ridicule.

So I’ve ended that by starting to throw my hat into the ring every so often. It has been so motivating and much more fun than I expected it to be! I’ve even won a few times. Yay! But even more than the winning, I’m enjoying knowing that others are looking at my art. I just hadn’t realized how much that was missing from my process. I’m accustomed to finishing a layout, showing Matt for his approval, and then putting it in the appropriate album. Sort of a letdown, you know?

Well, last night I took the next step in this journey of making my crafting process more public and social. I submitted my work for consideration for a design team. Gulp.

The assignment was fun because it involved working with sketches, which I really love anyway. I liked the sketches, and I’m proud of my resulting layouts. So I feel like I won even if I’m not chosen for the team. Here are my submissions:

Baptized

Sunset cruise

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