The Constant Scrapper

If I'm not scrapbooking I'm thinking about scrapbooking!

emotional journaling

My kind of bouquet

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Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #111, and the twist is “buttons.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch, then create something and link it up! 🙂

Twisted Sketches #111

Here’s my Design Team layout inspired by the sketch. The patterned papers I used on this very colorful layout are from American Crafts’ Margarita line.

Bouquet_Daquila-Pardo

My darling man brought home a bouquet of Copic markers for me "just because." He's a keeper!

The journaling on my page reads: “Matt came home from work on Thursday and said, ‘I got something for you; it’s on the table.’ It was a bag full of Copic markers! I was so surprised…and excited…and touched. What an amazing thing to do just because.”

I cut that 3×3 envelope with my Silhouette and added it so that I could tuck in a thank you card to Matt (my way of including a more personal thank you to my generous and thoughtful honey). It’s the first thing I’ve ever made using Copics. And so my new obsession begins. 🙂

This hydrangea card was made using my new Copic markers.

Celebrating National Donut Day my way

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I heard several times today (through Twitter and on the radio) that it was National Donut Day. Who knew? Frankly, I had never heard of this special day before, but it was obviously promoted quite well this year. Well, I decided to forgo the free donut at participating donut shops and celebrate in my own way…with a layout!

My parents met in a little college town in Pennsylvania called Beaver Falls. My mother had moved there from California to attend college and lived with her Aunt Mary Lou, Uncle Joe and their three little boys. To earn her keep she worked at their donut shop, which was just down the block from their home and just a short walk from the campus. It was a perfect situation, and she loved living and working with them.

When my parents got married and had me and my brother, they moved to Ohio. But we visited all the Beaver Falls relatives very often (I would guess about monthly). One of the most fun parts of visiting was going down the street to the donut shop. Uncle Joe made wonderful donuts and cream puffs (my favorite), and all the regular customers were very sweet to Phil and me as we sipped hot chocolate, ate pastries and twirled incessantly on the stools at the counter.

And so, on this special national holiday 😉 I created a layout to commemorate another sweet part of my childhood.

DeAngelisDonuts_Daquila-Pardo

DeAngelis' Delightfully Different Donuts

In case you want to read the journaling and can’t: Whenever we visited relatives in Beaver Falls we always made at least one stop at Uncle Joe and Aunt Mary Lou’s donut shop. No donut I’ve tasted since has ever been as good as Uncle Joe’s. Mom worked there throughout college, and it figures in many of my childhood memories. Although this original location closed some years ago, their son, Dicky, still runs the remaining shop.

Happiness blog hop

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Welcome! This post is one stop along the trail on a Happiness Blog Hop, where we’re discussing scrapbooking as it relates to happiness. Links to the other participants are at the bottom of this post.

To enter the giveaway from Scrapworthy Lives (the host of this blog hop), be sure to comment below and tell me what makes you happy. You can earn one entry per blog. This means that if you visit everyone’s blog and comment on each, you will have 14 entries. All entries must be posted by Friday, June 3, at midnight Central Standard Time (Chicago, IL, USA). Stephanie will ship the prize anywhere in the world. The winner will be announced on Sunday, June 5, on Scrapworthy Lives.

When I was five and my brother was four, we had the most wonderful opportunity. Because my mother’s friends knew what a great teacher she was (and still is), they asked her to take their children and teach them at our home for their kindergarten year. There were eight of us who gathered in our basement to learn together for a half day three days per week. I loved it.

One of my many strong memories of this year is the morning ritual we followed. Each day after getting to our assigned seats and settling in we stood, turned toward the U.S. flag displayed in the corner, placed our right hands over our hearts and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we turned to face a fabric poster that Mom had hanging from a thumb tack on the left wall. It was made of a light-weight burlap and had pastel smiley faces tumbling down the sides, framing this poem:

“Begin the day with friendliness,
Keep friendly all day long.

Keep in your soul a friendly thought,
In your heart a friendly song.

Have in your mind a word of cheer,
For all who come your way,

And they will greet you too, in turn,
And wish you a happy day!”

But we didn’t recite that poem; we sang it. Mom tells the story that one day as she was reading through the poem a tune just poured out of her to go with the words. So eight four- and five-year-olds and Mrs. Daquila raised their voices in unison to sing this happy little poem to that happy little tune. What a fantastic way to start the school day!

All these years later I can sing that little song, and I instantly feel happier. When I talked to my brother on the phone yesterday I started singing the song to him out of the blue, and he joined in with me. Good memories and good feelings go hand-in-hand. We scrapbookers already know that, don’t we?

But another lesson that I’ve learned from thinking back on that story is the power anchors have in our emotional lives. I’m referring to anchors as stimuli in our environment that our brains associate with and then use to trigger a specific emotional response in us. You know, like when the smell of onions and garlic sautéing takes you back to the Thanksgiving mornings of your childhood, when your grandmother would get up early to start making stuffing for the turkey. The emotional response to that smell is likely to make you feel pretty good (even if Grandma was a wretched cook)!

Why does a particular blanket make a child feel more secure in an unfamiliar situation? Because his brain connects for him the times his father brought him that blanket and then told him a story before tucking him in. Just having the blanket can make him feel that way.

Scrapbooking is a happy part of my life. I love to read about scrapbook trends, look at others’ creative work online, talk about scrapping, plan my next layout in my head and shop for supplies. And I really look forward to my scrap time! But I recently realized that when the time arrived to go into my craft room and create, I had some negative anchors associated with it. I would go into my little room and feel my energy drop. I’d start to feel overwhelmed and angry at myself for wasting this precious time. Not really productive emotions, right?

Then one day I walked into our office to find Matt watching a video of a little boy playing the ukulele and singing Jason Mraz’ “I’m Yours.” I watched it over his shoulder and said, “That song just makes me smile.”

That’s when it hit me. I could create a list of songs that have that effect on me, put them on my iPod and play them when I’m ready to start scrapping (and whenever I feel down, for that matter). And you know, it worked!

So, let’s sum up what I’ve learned here:

  1. Make time to do things that make me happier, such as taking photos, recording family stories and using pretty paper to pull it all together.
  2. Find triggers that help improve my energy level and feel happier when I need it.
  3. A happy little song can make a big difference.
  4. Begin the day with friendliness.

🙂

Remember to comment and tell me what makes you happy to be entered in the blog hop giveaway.

TO GO TO THE NEXT BLOG ON THE HOP:

Pie for Breakfast

FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF ALL THE PARTICIPATING BLOGS:

Scrapworthy Lives
1200 Some Miles
Take a Picture and Remember This
Scrap Your Life
My Life in Photos & Words
This Kalil Life
Fun Mama
Scrapping Mojo
XNomad’s Blog
Nuggets
The Constant Scrapper
Pie for Breakfast
Scraps & Sass
Abstracts Mixed with Extracts

Resources covering the relationship between music and mood:

The subtle science and exact art of letter writing

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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.

PSILoveYou_JDaquila-Pardo

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

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

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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:

  1. The sweet sweater vest my mom knit for me
  2. My jack-o-lantern smile
  3. The very precise way my hands have been arranged
  4. That awful haircut (I mean, really?)
  5. 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:

  1. The way my classroom at Immaculate Conception School looked
  2. My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Strittmatter
  3. Being escorted up the hill to school every morning by the next-door neighbors’ dog, Barney
  4. Watching in fascination as Mike Batiste, who sat in front of me, turned his paper upside-down to write his notes left-handed
  5. 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.

SecondGrade_JDaquila-Pardo

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.