1 photo

Baby’s first acorn

October 19, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

I created this layout to celebrate this natural beauty.

Our city had a “free tree” program this spring to increase shade in our drought-stricken desert climate, so we signed up to receive one. We planted this tiny oak in an open area of our back yard and watered it faithfully all summer.

The other day I watched a locust catapult itself from the grass into our little oak, so I ran over to check it out. When I got up close to see it, I found this adorable acorn. Just one on the whole tree. The locust is so many times larger than the acorn, and it was just so beautiful. I had to capture this lovely moment with nature and dedicate a layout to it.

Product/technique notes:
The majority of the patterns I used here are from Little Yellow Bicycle’s Acorn Hollow collection.

Trap-Neuter-Return gone awry

October 16, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Alley Cat Allies launched National Feral Cat Day® on their 10th anniversary in 2001 to raise awareness about feral cats, promote Trap-Neuter-Return and recognize the millions of compassionate Americans who care for them. Feral cats are domestic cats (like pet cats), but they have had little or no contact with humans, and so they are fearful of us and cannot be adopted. Their home is the outdoors. And there is a simple way to help them: Trap-Neuter-Return. This program ends reproduction, stabilizes feral cat populations and improves individual cats’ lives. The behaviors and stresses associated with mating—pregnancy, yowling and fighting—stop.

The basics of Trap-Neuter-Return (also called Trap-Neuter-Release) programs include:
Trap: Humanely trap all of the cats in a colony (a group of cats living outdoors together).
Neuter: Take the cats in their traps to a veterinarian or clinic to be neutered, vaccinated and eartipped (a universal symbol indicating they have been neutered).
Return: Return the cats to their original outdoor home.

I have written on my blog in the past about the fact that Matt and I participate in animal rescue in our area, and we believe in the good that TNR programs do for both the feral cats and the community in which they live. So, when the beautiful and spirited (read really aggressive) tomcat in my layout below “moved into” our back yard a few years ago and started scaring off most of the other animals we regularly saw and fed, we decided he needed to be TNRed. It was for his own welfare as well as that of the other animals.

We did it all: trapped him (which always makes me so nervous), took him for checkup/vaccinations/neutering and then after he had recovered, released him back into our yard. We actually quite liked having him around—just wanted him to be safer and less aggressive—so we hoped that he would stay in our area. All went as planned for Gandalf (named after Gandalf the Grey in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy).

Until my brother, Phil, came for a visit from North Carolina shortly after we had gone through all this. Phil had been seriously considering rescuing/adopting a cat. But instead, in a surprising twist, he fell for Gandalf (who he renamed Willie (for Pittsburgh Pirates’ home-run hitting hall of famer, Willie Stargell)) and flew him home, thus ending Willie’s era as a feral cat! I called this layout “TNR gone awry” because Gandalf/Willie’s story did not end as we had expected; I think the actual ending is much sweeter.

Willie is Phil's homeboy.

Did we ever love that swing

October 15, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

A photo like this one from 1971 really takes me right back to that place and time.

Phil and I (and many times our mom) spent hours upon hours on our swing in the back yard. We talked, told secrets, sang songs and made plans together. They are wonderful memories for me.

It appears from the clothes we’re wearing in it that this sweet photo from September 1971 could have been snapped right after we had returned home from church. I am wearing a dress Mom sewed for me out of aqua dotted swiss fabric; I remember really loving this dress. And Phil looks spiffy in his striped jeans and hair so carefully combed.

Normally I liked to swing pointing the other direction—into the neighbors’ yards you see in the background here. It gave me a longer view, which somehow inspired me to swing higher!

Product/technique notes:
I used the PageMaps sketch below for this layout; as you see I followed it pretty closely because I thought it was so suited to my photo. I also used papers from My Mind’s Eye The Sweetest Thing collection and stamps (with Copic coloring) from Hero Arts.

Would you like fries with that?

October 12, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

My ensemble is from the Bob Evans fashion house, and Phil is head-to-toe Burger King.

Polyester restaurant uniforms do nothing for the wearer’s self esteem, I can tell you from personal experience. Will you take a look at this 1987 photo that my mom snapped of Phil and me just as we were both about to head to our respective summer jobs? Wow.

I got to wear a deep rust double-knit with little flowers and a matching apron for my waitress gig at Bob Evans. And mine was the good uniform of the two! Poor Phil had to wear this ghastly bright rust ensemble, with a faux vest attached to the shirt—and a matching ball cap—to work at Burger King.

There are certain things that teenagers don’t traditionally like to do. Being forced to wear something they dislike is one of them. But because we wanted to save money for college, Phil and I donned these polyester monstrosities several times a week to earn our pay. Teenagers also don’t much like having their photograph taken when they’re in said ugly clothes, but Mom insisted on getting this shot. Now I’m really happy that she did because I love having photographic evidence of our days of slinging hash to stack cheese.

Product/technique notes
I used Simple Stories Harvest Lane products to make this page (the colors were just perfect) and sketch #189 from Creative Scrappers.

Write. Click. Scrapbook.

October 5, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I am so excited and honored today because I am one of two designers being featured on Write. Click. Scrapbook. as part of their Talent Abounds Week! If you are visiting me from the WCS site, I am so pleased to have you here.

I thought that seeing as my WCS post is about my love for scrapbooking with sketches, I would create a sketch for you to download and a sample layout based on it. Because I often design pages with vintage photos from my childhood, and my parents—as so many people did with film cameras—took only a few photos of most events, I find myself needing a lot of one- or two-photo sketches. So I designed this one-photo sketch to work with.

The truth is that yesterday was our 15th anniversary, so I wanted to scrap one of our wedding photos and thought that a double-wedding-ring-quilt look would be great to try. Here is the sketch:

If you use this sketch I would love to see your layout!

And here is my layout:

The colors in the BasicGrey Plumeria patterned papers were perfect because of how they went with my bouquet.

I also created the cut file for the quilt element so that I could cut it out on my Silhouette. If you have a Silhouette and would like to try this file, just leave me a comment asking for it (be sure to include your email address) and I will send it to you.

I want to thank Write. Click. Srapbook. again for this wonderful opportunity to appear on their blog today. I have so much respect for their designers and writers and really find great inspiration there. And thank you for visiting my blog today. I do hope you’ll leave me a quick message to let me know you were here and I hope you’ll come back again. 🙂

« Previous Page