one-page layouts

Food coma

April 21, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I kept this page simple because I just wanted to highlight the photo and the papers.

When it’s time to be fed Liam just about ricochets off the walls in anticipation. And once we dish up his vittles for him he sort of attacks his bowl. I think it’s safe to say this boy likes to eat a little too much!

But once he’s plowed through his meal and cleaned all the gravy off his face (are you getting the barbaric image I’m trying to paint here?), he turns into this sweet little sleepy baby. He finds a comfy spot and crashes hard. It’s at this point one day that I took this photo of him.

I based this layout on sketch #202 from the Creative Scrappers blog, and I am entering it into their April challenge. I am also entering this into Shimelle’s Online scrapbooking weekend challenge #4: Create a project using yellow, grey and one other color. It’s rather obvious, I’m sure, but I chose to mix yellow and grey with blue.

The Creative Scrappers sketch I referenced while making this layout.

Product/technique notes: I just love the boyish colors and images in the October Afternoon Sasparilla line, so I thought it would work perfectly with this photo of Liam because of his grey markings. I cut the title banner on my Silhouette.

Day camp

April 17, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 10 Comments

The Little Yellow Bicycle Paradise collection was perfect to use with this 1976 photo.

There were a few summers when we were growing up that Mom and Dad signed us up to go to day camp. I think it was just for a week each summer, maybe two, but it left a big impression on me.

I remember being quite nervous to go, but I loved the adventure of it. We made candles in buckets of sand that we had hollowed out into shapes, tie dyed t-shirts, swam, fished, hiked…the usual activities. But the most important part that I can remember is that we got on a bus with kids we didn’t know and went somewhere new. It meant we were old enough to do this on our own—well, with lots of adult supervision, of course.

But these adults weren’t our parents or school teachers. They were mostly young adults (like the twin sisters in my photo) who were there with us as counselors. A counselor is, by definition, there to advise and guide. My apologies to any of my school teachers (many of them nuns) who may one day read this post, but in my nine-year-old brain a camp counselor was way cooler than a teacher. Teachers imparted math and history knowledge and then held us accountable with tests. Camp counselors showed us how to do things like tie knots. And there was nary a test in sight!

Way cooler.

So, here’s to my parents for giving us the opportunity to go on this type of adventure and to my camp counselors for teaching us the things we didn’t learn in school. And in case you can’t tell, this photo was taken on dress-up day (I think it was the last day of camp), and I am the little hobo with pigtails standing second from the right. 🙂

I based this layout on a nice sketch provided at the Artful Delight blog, and I am entering it into their April challenge. I am also entering this into Shimelle’s Online scrapbooking weekend challenge #8: Create a project featuring a stamp you should use more often.

The Artful Delight sketch I referenced while making this layout.

I used all Little Yellow Bicycle patterned papers from the “Paradise” collection and colored in that beautiful Hero Arts tree stamp with Copic markers to match the rest.

On a bright cloud of music shall we fly?

April 12, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

This lovely song from "The King and I" made the perfect title for this layout.

This layout holds one of those photos from my past that has no specific story behind it yet says so much about my early life.

It’s July 1970, and Phil and I are dancing in the living room. We danced together a lot back then. In fact, Mom tells me that when we were little she and Dad hardly needed to turn on the TV in the evenings because Phil and I were such good entertainment. How sweet is that? She says that we would dance or just chase each other in circles around the room until we flopped down in exhaustion—and that was good enough for them. Now that’s something only a loving parent could say and mean it!

There’s a challenge going on over at My Scrapbook Nook to use a quote as a title. So, I created this title element on my Silhouette to go with my photo because I’ve always loved “Shall we dance?” from The King and I and wanted to make anyone looking at this layout hear the music in their heads.

Easter together

April 8, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

This is a special photo because all 12 cousins were together for it.

My dad was the middle of three children in his family, who always told him he was the thorn between two roses because he was flanked by sisters. This 1969 photo includes all 12 of Dad and his siblings’ children (Nana and Papa’s grandchildren). All of us together (mostly) posing for a photo on Easter morning. Phil and I, the youngest in the clan, are in the lower left corner. It actually looks like our older cousins are having to tether us to keep us in the photo!

I created this layout based on a scraplifting challenge at BasicGrey’s blog. In place of the hearts punched out of several patterns, I decided to create my background with a Martha Stewart All Over Punch. I punched several rows of designs out of brown cardstock before backing them with six different patterned papers from the BG Sweet Threads 6×6 pad. It creates a lovely quilt-like effect.

I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t recommend trying this technique on a layout about just any photo because it took so long to complete. But for this special photo I’m happy to have taken the time. In fact, keep a lookout for a post coming soon, where I’ll do a review of the Martha Stewart All Over Punch tool and offer some tips for using it.

For the love of the game

April 4, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 5 Comments

These photos of me in my softball uniform are from 1977 and 1978.

As a kid I was always very athletic…in my head. In my mind’s eye I made dazzling shoe-top catches and hit long shots over the fence, but in reality I was pretty awkward. I tried really hard, don’t mistake me, but my efforts usually produced boringly average results.

Even so, most of the time (except for the occasional bouts of ennui I experienced at softball practices) I loved being involved in the Willoughby Baseball League. For one thing, my brother was on a boys’ team during that same time, and I liked that we both had WBL uniforms, practices and games down at Todd Fields. I also loved having my family come to my games. If I close my eyes and really put myself back…in my uniform and mitt, hands on my knees in the outfield, sun on my back and feeling silly chanting “Hey, batter batter!”…I can still feel a little of that nervous aliveness that comes from performing in front of loved ones. That feeling that, even though you know they will tell you how well you did no matter what happens, you yearn to do something spectacular for them to see.

I don’t remember how many years I played in the league (these photos are from 1977 and 1978), but I do know that I gained a lot by being part of it. I learned to get along with a different group of girls than those I went to school with, to practice even when I didn’t feel like it, to care about contributing to the team’s success and to overcome my nervousness enough to play my part in that success. Yup, team sports can do all that!

I based this layout on the following PageMaps sketch from February and used papers from the BasicGrey “Oliver” 6×6 pad:

The PageMaps sketch I referenced while making this layout.

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