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La vie en rose

May 19, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

The second sketch challenge has been posted at the new SCRAP & MUSIC challenge blog! Head over to the site to grab the sketch and play along.

The challenges on this blog involve following the sketch and using a title on your layout with a line from the provided music. This second sketch came with the song “La Vie En Rose” by Edith Piaf. Below I’ve included the lyrics in their original French as well as an English version (not a direct translation but one that was stylized for the rhyme and meter of English). I’ve highlighted the line in the English version that I used as my title:

French
Des yeux qui font baisser les miens,
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche,
Voilà le portrait sans retouche
De l’homme auquel j’appartiens

Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et ça me fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Donc je connais la cause.
C’est lui pour moi,
Moi pour lui dans la vie,
Il me l’a dit, l’a juré
Pour la vie. Et dès que je l’aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
Des nuits d’amour à plus finir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Des ennuis des chagrins s’effacent
Heureux, heureux à mourir.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et ça me fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Donc je connais la cause.
C’est toi pour moi,
Moi pour toi dans la vie,
Il me l’a dit, l’a juré
Pour la vie.
Et dès que je l’aperçois
Alors je sens en moi Mon coeur qui bat

English
Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I’m in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak angels sing from above
Everyday words seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose

I thought that love was just a word
They sang about in songs I’d heard
It took your kisses to reveal
That I was wrong and love is real

Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I’m in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak angels sing from above
Everyday words seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose

The reason I chose this line of the song is that I decided to use a photo of my brother, Phil, in my layout—a shot of him on a trip to Brussels, Belgium, and Paris, France. Phil works at the Center for European Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, and as an employee at the university he has the option of taking a class each semester. He decided that he really wanted to learn French, so he has now taken four semesters of it and will take his fifth in the fall. The more he studies it, the more he loves it. So I thought the line from the song, “Everyday words seem to turn into love songs” would work perfectly to elicit the feeling Phil has for the words, poeticism and even rules of the language he’s studying.

My baby bro, Phil, enjoying a brew in Brussels in October 2012

Here is the journaling from my layout because it’s quite small and hard to read:
After three years of high school French, all but forgotten, Phil is now heading into his fifth semester of it at UNC. He has always loved words, the sound of spoken French makes him happy and he enjoys the way studying it is like solving a puzzle. “I’m drawn to all things French: movies, music, arts, culture. And the lyricism of the language, the turns of phrase, tickle me. Je l’adore!”

Labor Day 1974

April 28, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Nana, Papa, Grandma, Grandpa, Phil and me in our backyard on Labor Day in 1974

On this layout is a photo of a very rare occurrence: both sets of my grandparents are visiting us at the same time. We lived in Ohio; Nana and Papa, Dad’s parents (on the left), lived in Pennsylvania; and Grandma and Grandpa, Mom’s parents (on the right) lived in California. So there were not a lot of opportunities to be together.

I’m assuming that Grandma and Grandpa were in town for a few weeks to visit, and then Nana and Papa drove in the two hours from PA to visit for Labor Day. Very cool. I love this photo.

Do I even have to point out the 1974 fashions Phil and I are sporting?

Product/technique notes:
I created this layout with patterned papers from Little Yellow Bicycle’s beautiful “Elizabeth Park” collection. I did a good bit of fussy cutting around the perimeter of my center area so that I could pop up the profusion of flowers over it around the edges. And in the bottom right quadrant I debossed the cardstock to add texture without adding a patterned paper that would compete with the flowers from the background paper.

Willoughby PAL Program

April 25, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

My mom is an excellent teacher, and you can see in this photo how the children are responding to her reading them a story. I'm so happy to have photos like this of her in action.

Today my last layout as guest designer for Artful Delight is live. I’ve really enjoyed using their April kit. Because I’ve never subscribed to a kit club before, I’m not accustomed to using the same set of products more than once in quick succession. But being AD’s guest designer for the month forced me to do that, and I liked the challenge that posed for me. I came out of it with three layouts that I’m quite happy with, and I had to dig a little deeper into my creative brain to find ways to make them with only the elements that came in the kit. It was a good exercise for me!

Thank you to Artful Delight for having me as their guest!

The journaling on this page: Mom opened her own pre-school program in March 1987 and called it Play and Learn (PAL). She taught four-year olds for two hours twice per week in a classroom in Browning School. The only reason she finally closed the program in June 1994 was because she and Daddy had decided to move to North Carolina. Mom says, “The PAL Program was really special to me. I loved the children, had wonderful rapport with the parents and loved every minute of what I was doing.”

Product/technique notes:
Obviously, I used the products from the Artful Delight April kit for this page, but I also used an older sketch of theirs from April 2012:
Sketch from last April from Artful Delight

Note: I’m submitting this to the Paper Issues “Chalk it Up to Your Own Style” link party.

Puppy love

April 18, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Spenser was the only dog I've ever had, and we loved each other dearly.

This is my second week as guest designer for Artful Delight, and this time I used their April kit to create a layout with a photo from 1991. Because both of my parents worked, we didn’t have pets while we were growing up because Mom and Dad didn’t think it was fair to have a pet and then leave it home alone every day. So my parents didn’t decide to get a dog until my brother and I were done with college and young adults.

At the time of this photo I was 24 and back at home living with my parents while working a full-time job. Enter Spenser. What an amazing little life. From the moment we picked him up at the breeder and brought him home, I was his. And even though Mom and Dad adopted him, he was mine. We fell in love immediately.

In this photo, I had just come home from a day at work, changed out of my work clothes and thrown myself onto the family room floor to cuddle with Spensie. He was only 4 months old here. In fact, you can just barely see his crate in the upper left corner of the photo. Dad was still training him, so he slept in the crate at night. He was little and feisty and his paws smelled like Fritos (have you ever noticed that about dogs?). Spense eventually grew to be a medium-husky miniature Schnauzer (a little bigger than they normally get), so pictures like this of him when he was a little baby are extra precious.

Ours was not that intense-but-shallow puppy love that we all associate with the adolescent years; no, it was deep and real and lasting. I love and miss you, sweet boy, every day.

Product/technique notes:
The patterned papers I used on this layout are all from the Dear Lizzy “Lucky Charm” collection, except for the wood grain, which came from Glitz’s “Color Me Happy” collection. I created the sunburst effect with my Cameo. I cut it out of the top half of the yellow cardstock and then backed that with half a sheet of the patterned paper to peek through. That way I could just build the rest of the page on top of the yellow sheet. It was so much easier than cutting each sun ray and gluing it down individually. [Thanks to Susan, who left a comment asking how I did the sunburst, for inspiring me to come back and add this to my post!]

Love story and guest designing for Artful Delight

April 11, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

I created this page using part of the April Artful Delight kit.

Today I am honored to be guest designing for Artful Delight! Using their April kit and sketch, I’ve created the layout above. It’s a photo of my parents on their honeymoon in the Pocono Mountains in June 1965. Aren’t they darling together?

I wanted to create a look reminiscent of 1960s decor, so I designed a simple linked-circles background that I cut out of wood grain paper (using my trusty Silhouette Cameo) and then tucked everything in and around it. I also sprinkled those tiny hearts—the ones left over from punching the top border strip—across the page diagonally, which put a sunny finishing touch on this fun page about part of my parents’ love story.

Thank you to Artful Delight for asking me to be their April guest designer. I look forward to sharing a few more projects throughout the month using their beautiful April kit.

Artful Delight's April sketch

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