Basic Grey

Movie quotes make great page titles

August 31, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #117, and the twist is “long.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch, then create something and link it up! 🙂

Here’s my Design Team layout inspired by the sketch. The quote I used in my title comes from my husband’s favorite movie, Joe Versus the Volcano (1990). Tom Hanks’ character says to Meg Ryan’s, “Been a long time coming to meet you. A long time on a crooked road.”

The title on my layout is a quote from my husband's favorite movie, Joe Versus the Volcano

The eyes have it

August 20, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I just love when I can complete a layout about a subject that matters to me while simultaneously fulfilling the requirements for three online challenges! This is one hard-working layout!

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

First, I based my design on this great sketch from the Sketchy Thursdays site. The added requirement was that the topic cover reading or literature in some way in honor of the start of the school year. I just love this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, so I decided to use it as my title: “Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.” Then I took a photo of some favorite books on our library shelf and pulled out a photo I took last spring of a beautiful budding tree in our neighborhood.

Second, I created this to enter into Shimelle’s Grid It Up challenge.

Third, this will also work for Shimelle’s Stickery challenge, where the mandate is to use stickers from more than one collection (I have used stickers on this layout from American Crafts, Basic Grey, My Mind’s Eye and October Afternoon, so I think I’ve over-delivered!).

Speaking of reading, do you love Jane Eyre? Well, Matt and I love the story, and we recently watched a TV miniseries version that we hadn’t seen before, starring Timothy Dalton as Mr. Rochester (from 1983). Enjoying it so much reminded me that I had a novel about the writing of Jane Eyre up on our bookshelf. I pulled that down and have have been caught up in it for the past few days. In Becoming Jane Eyre Sheila Kohle combines what is know of Bronte’s life with her imagination of how that life lead her to write the highly successful book Jane Eyre. If you’re a fan of Bronte’s masterpiece in particular or of historical fiction, I can recommend this novel.

Young Crafters Unite blog hop!

July 1, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 81 Comments

Hi everyone, and welcome to the next stop on the Young Crafters Unite Blog Hop! If you’re following along the hop you should be arriving here from Chari Moss’ blog (She makes such adorable cards!). If you aren’t a hopper but want to join in the fun you can start at the beginning by visiting the Young Crafters Unite website.

Why do I consider myself a young crafter?

I always feel younger than the calendar says I am. I really believe that being “young” or “old” is up to us. So I act the way I want to feel. And crafting is one of the things I do that helps me stay young. Shopping for crafting supplies surely must reduce wrinkles because it makes me giddy like a little girl. And the feeling I get when I start to cut, stamp and glue things together…well, if my hair was longer I would put it up in pigtails! I suspect all crafters are young crafters. 🙂

My “favorite thing” project

We were asked to create a new project using our favorite things, and I chose to create a layout using two favorite things:

These photos are of my brother, Phil, and me at the baby pool in our hometown. I love everything about these photos: Phil’ls scrunchy smile, our darling bathing suits pushed low on our round bellies, our suntanned skin, our happy faces and my memories of many hours spent at that pool together with our mom. Wow, these are awesome photos!
I recently created a tutorial about crocheting on your scrapbook pages, so that’s my new favorite technique! I’ve used it on this layout to create the sun element. It takes some extra time, so I’ll probably save it for more special photos/memories, but I love the even more handmade and vintage feel it gives to my layouts. 🙂

At the Pool highlights a few special photos of me and my brother in the summer of 1970.

More of my personal favorites

I thought I would also share just a few more of my recent layouts and cards because they are all about being or staying young, and they make me happy to look at!

I think you are…
I made this little set of 2×3-inch cards so that I could occasionally pop a love note in my husband’s laptop bag before he leaves the house. Why does food with faces make us smile?

I think you are...hot, cool, sweet and cheesy!

I am I because my little dog knows me
I can’t help it—I love this layout. That photo of our precious family dog, Spenser, is from 1991 when he was only a few months old. We all adored him and he adored us. And I think this Gertrude Stein quote is awesome.

I think this Gertrude Stein quote is all this layout needed to capture my feeling.

He will go far
This is a photo from 2000, when our nephew Jerad was only 4. I thought this new October Afternoon line, Rocket Age, would work perfectly to highlight all the potential I see in his little face.

This outer space-themed paper just seemed like the perfect way to showcase a child's potential.

Thank you so much for hopping by today. Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post because there are prizes up for grabs for some lucky participants. Randomly selected commenters will have the opportunity to win prizes from Simon Says Stamp, Paper Smooches and Lawn Fawn! Comment by Monday, July 4th at 11:59PM CST to win; winners will be announced Wednesday, July 6th at noon CST.

The next young crafter on this hop is Kelly Latevola (This woman is a master with Distress Inks!). Thanks again for stopping by, and I do hope you’ll come back again soon.

Here’s to Pat

June 27, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I’m sorry I’ve been absent lately, but I do have a good reason. I have been putting a good deal of crafty and blog-writing time into my first ever guest blog spot! I’m very excited to be appearing as a guest blogger this Wednesday on Live. Teach. Create. I’ve created a tutorial that I hope you’ll check out and use on a future layout.

Don’t worry; I’ll remind you again on Wednesday. 🙂

In the meantime, I’ll share a layout I did a while back about my husband’s stepfather, Pat. He came into Matt’s life when he was about 12 and did a lot to make his life more stable. Though Pat had never been married or a father before, he stepped into a family of five small children who were not happy about having him around and won them over one-by-one. Unfortunately, Pat’s and Sandie’s marriage ended after ten years, but Pat did leave his mark on the family.

I used some rather psychedelic paper for this layout, but I thought it worked well with both the style of the older photo on the left and the colors in the later photo on the right.

So, here’s to Pat.

This layout is in honor of my husband's stepfather, Pat.

PageMaps’ My Little Shoebox sketch contest

June 13, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

Every once in a while I run across a sketch that really makes me yearn to pull together some photos and products and get scrapping. This PageMaps sketch had that effect on me when I saw it on their blog. It’s their June contest sketch, and I knew I wanted to play along.

PageMaps June 2011 sketch for contest

A few of the reasons I like this sketch so much and can see using it again are that it features four photos (so you can really tell a story with them), calls for a few nice pops of patterned paper and still leaves a good amount of white space for the eyes to rest a bit while looking at it. It accomplishes a lot in a 12×12 canvas!

This is the layout I created based on the sketch. The photos are from Memorial Day weekend, just a few weeks ago. When Matt and I started talking about the kinds of things we could do during the holiday weekend, Matt suggested, “We could drive to Fredericksburg for the day so you can go to that scrapbook store you like.”

Here is my entry for the PageMaps June 2011 sketch contest.

Now if that’s not proof of love, I don’t know what is. 🙂

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