border punches

The subtle science and exact art of letter writing

May 5, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 8 Comments

While I didn’t get up at an obscene hour last Friday to watch the royal wedding, I’m a romantic, so I did follow along throughout the day watching and reading about it.

Everything was beautifully orchestrated and everyone was gorgeous. But it wasn’t the spectacle of the event that drew me so much as the opportunity to immerse myself in this great celebration of love. Who among us can see a couple like William and Catherine, young and in love, and not feel our hearts swell?

How often do we have the opportunity to share a grand display of love? Well, certainly shutting down an entire country’s economy for the day and globally televising our declarations of love aren’t in the cards for most of us, but there is a small yet very meaningful gesture available to us any day. It’s the love letter.

Watching William and Catherine vow to love and honor each other all the days of their lives made me itchy to share some mushy sentiments with my husband.

Advice for the love(letter)lorn

But have you attempted to write a love letter? It’s daunting trying to translate those kinds of emotions into words! We can’t all be Victor Hugo:
“My adorable and adored: I have been asking myself every moment if such happiness is not a dream. It seems to me that what I feel is not of earth. I cannot yet comprehend this cloudless heaven. My whole soul is yours…”

Wow, would I love to be able to write this way! Fortunately, there are people through the ages who have excelled at just that. We all like to take inspiration from other artists’ work, so let’s take a look at a few resources that showcase letter-writing artists:

Perhaps these wonderful love letters—of all styles—can help start your words flowing. Keep in mind, though, that the most important element of a good love letter is that it contain honest words from your heart. The rest is gravy.

Of course, my medium of choice for this billet-doux was a scrapbook layout. Although my words are not going to go down in the history books for their style, my hope is that the substance will be always inked on Matt’s heart.

This love letter to my husband is meant to remind him of what I cherish about us.

How can you resist?

April 27, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 7 Comments

Twisted Sketches launches its 98th sketch today, and the twist this time is “paint.” 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:

That's me, wearing Daddy's clip-on sunglasses and enjoying the Ohio sunshine.

This is the sketch:

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Twisted Sketch #98 calls for 2 photos

For the “paint” twist I was inspired to try a resist technique on the talk bubble using white shimmer paint. I have done resist techniques with ink and embossing powder before but had not yet tried paint resist, so I thought I would show a quick step-by-step just in case it might inspire you to try it on a future layout.

Gather your supplies: Acrylic paint, rubber stamp, Distress Inks and foam applicators.
This technique doesn't take much in the way of supplies.
Apply paint (shimmer paint in my example) to the stamp image and stamp it carefully (don’t smear it) on a spare bit of cardstock.
Immediately take your rubber stamp to a sink and clean it well with soap and water. It’s best not to let the acrylic paint dry on the stamp as it may be harder to remove.
If you’re patient wait until the paint thoroughly dries. If not, hit it with your heat tool for a minute or two.
Start applying the Distress Inks with a circular motion and blend your colors a little where they meet. I used the three colors shown in the photo, but of course there are no rules about how many you use.
Slightly mist a paper towel with water and gently buff off the extra ink from the painted areas to reveal the true color!

Here is a close-up of the final effect. I think I like it!

This close-up photo shows how the shimmer paint resisted the inks.

If you decide to try this quick technique after reading my post, ~~have your people call my people~~ please leave a comment and a link so I can see what you’ve done!

Spanning a score of years

April 19, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I really appreciate the layouts I see that compare people at different times in their life. So I pulled out two photos of Matt’s nephew, Aaron, at the ages of 4 and 24 and got to work on a layout to compare them.

The hardest part about this layout for me was finding products that would work well for both times in a boy’s life. But once I did, the sketch I found on shimelle.com helped it all come together. Following is the resulting layout as well as the sketch.

Aaron at 4 & 24: A boy grows into a man

The sketch calls for one large or two smaller photos and lots of attention on the border.

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!

May the road rise up to meet you…

March 16, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Sketch #92 on the Twisted Sketches site is available today! The sketch is for one vertical photo, and the twist this time is “brads.” Following is my contribution to the design team layouts that go up for inspiration:

May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

The sketch included a place for a long-ish title, and because this week we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day I thought of using part of an Irish blessing for mine. This is a photo of my baby bro in Central Park when he took a Christmas trip to NYC this past December. I liked the effect of combining this Irish blessing for him with the idea of the road and travel.

To create the patterned paper highlight area behind the photo I cut small strips of travel-themed paper (Wander by BasicGrey) and punched some of them with a postage stamp border punch (Fiskars) and then layered them randomly. The last line of the Irish blessing is written on the ticket to the left of the picture.

I hope the design team’s interpretations of sketch #92 inspire you to use it for one of your photos.

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