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Back in the saddle

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

I apologize for my long-ish absence, gentle readers. I was at a social media conference for my business, which took a considerable amount of time and energy (as conferences usually do). If you’re into social media you may have heard of PubCon, which covers topics within the Internet marketing world—search engine optimization, Twitter and FaceBook marketing, affiliate programs, etc. The event was quite good, and now I have to corral all the great ideas swimming around in my head and start acting on some of them for our tech support business.

Needless to say, I missed my blog and am ready to get back to it! To get this week rolling I offer today’s layout. It’s a photo I took a few years ago of my mom and her younger brother. They live many states apart from one another and don’t have a lot of opportunities to be together. So even though this time was to attend the funeral of a dearly beloved aunt, I couldn’t let the chance slip away to capture some photos of the two of them.

My mom and her younger brother, Terry

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!

Charlie the Tuna, a pleated skirt and a jack-o-lantern smile

February 15, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

It is such a wonder to me that even photos from our past that have almost no visual context (like a school portrait) can bring back so many connected memories. In this horrible, wonderful photo of me from second grade I notice:

The sweet sweater vest my mom knit for me
My jack-o-lantern smile
The very precise way my hands have been arranged
That awful haircut (I mean, really?)
My Charlie the Tuna pin

The details that aren’t in this photo but that come flooding back to me just by looking at it are:

The way my classroom at Immaculate Conception School looked
My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Strittmatter
Being escorted up the hill to school every morning by the next-door neighbors’ dog, Barney
Watching in fascination as Mike Batiste, who sat in front of me, turned his paper upside-down to write his notes left-handed
How much I loved my shoes for that year, which were tan and navy tie ups with a turtle embossed on the side

Some photos might not tell you a lot about themselves at the outset. I have found that sometimes just sitting with a photo like this one and casting yourself mentally back to that time—to the feelings of that time—can work a little memory magic.

My second grade school portrait, 1974-75

Now for a little note about the design of this page (because I’m not sure if it’s obvious in the photo above). I wanted to imitate the skirt of my school uniform—a blue, gray, white and black jumper—so I pleated blue checked paper across the bottom section.

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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