The Constant Scrapper

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

Silhouette

Fun and games

By 6 Comments

My first sketch for Creative Scrappers went live on their site on Sunday, and I was so excited to see how the design team used it. All their pages are just beautiful!

Here is a peak at the sketch, and I hope you’ll go grab the full-sized version at Creative Scrappers and use it to play along:
Here is my sketch!

I decided to play along with my own sketch, so I created this page about a recent night out with some friends for BINGO! We were having a little going-away party for our friend, Sri (in the turquoise top), who was about to leave to spend the summer in the English countryside with her grandparents and then come back to the States to attend graduate school. Quite a nice new beginning, right?

The journaling reads, “If BINGO sounds like a game for geriatrics, try playing it at The Park Hotel with Sri, Deborah and Heather! They serve shots when certain numbers are called, hold dance-offs to break ties and give garden gnomes as prizes. What a good time.”

I’ll add this comment: This is not like the BINGO they played in the church I grew up in; in fact, it’s pretty irreverent. 😉

Fun&Games_Daquila-Pardo

I was sorry to see my friend, Sri, leave, but I know she's starting a great new life.

Just me and the open road

By 2 Comments

OpenRoad_Daquila-Pardo

When a kid has a bike, everything changes.

This is the first week Creative Scrappers is revealing the work of their new sketch artists and design teams. Sketch #215 is a great one created by Jenny Evans, and I decided to play along with it to celebrate with my new team members.

Sketch #215 from Creative Scrappers

My journaling on this layout reads:
“What a 6-year-old girl knows about her world changes once she a gets a bike. Pre-bike all I knew of my hometown I saw from a moving car or on walks with my parents. But once Santa left me a beautiful blue vehicle of discovery under the Christmas tree my world expanded. Willoughby was mine!”

Product/technique notes: I pulled together this sweet little summer page using patterned papers from Simple Stories’ Summer Fresh collection and that cool building paper from Studio Calico’s Abroad collection.

My first visit to Disneyland

By Leave a Comment

FirstDisney_Daquila-Pardo

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not me!

My mom lived in California from the time she was seven until leaving to attend college in Ohio right after high school, but her parents lived there for the remainder of their lives. So, once Mom and Dad started having a family, they frequently traded visits between California and Ohio so Mom’s parents could spend time with their grandchildren. Obviously, I don’t remember this time, but during our visit in June 1968 Grandma and Grandpa took me to Disneyland for the first time.

In creating this layout, I have hit upon a little tip I can share with you about making identifications in vintage photos.

I know the details my mom wrote on the back of these shots—because I scan the fronts and backs of my old photos—which said that it was June 1968 and that I was with the Big Bad Wolf. So right there, I have some great information. But as I was coming to the journaling part of this page, I started worrying about which amusement park featured the Big Bad Wolf. I mean, I thought it was Disneyland, but I wasn’t sure. It could have been Knott’s Berry Farm, which I know we also visited on at least one of our trips to California. And I wanted to be sure before putting pen to paper.

So I turned to Google’s images search and typed in “Disneyland 1968.” I thought this was probably a long-shot way to start my search, but I knew that I could refine it if need be.

First of all, I encourage you to do a search like this just for the fun of seeing the old Kodacolor images of people in their 60s garb and Disneyland in all its 60s glory. Just take a look at a few of the wonderful images I found:

teacup

This image came from http://home.earthlink.net/~rxunit/id15.html.

1968trip3

This image came from http://matterhorn1959.blogspot.com/2009/12/childs-trip-to-disneyland-1968.html.

Disneyland-1968-Tomorrowlan

This image came from http://www.tickledpinklife.com/2011/02/when-the-peoplemover-was-the-futur/

Now back to my objective for doing this search: I hit paydirt on the first try! Take a look at this image and then compare it to the Big Bad Wolf photo on my layout. My heart sped up when I noticed the same building and landscaping (it’s a Micky Mouse flower bed) in the background as in my photo! This was enough proof for me that these photos of mine were taken in the Magic Kingdom.

1968trip2

This image came from http://matterhorn1959.blogspot.com/2009/12/childs-trip-to-disneyland-1968.html.

So the next time you’re casting about for details to include in your journaling or to confirm the places, events or times in your vintage photos, try a Google image search. This is a rich resource for photo research, and I say the more details the better when you’re creating a special page like this.

Product/technique notes: All the patterned papers I used on this project were from the BasicGrey’s Up, Up & Away, PB&J and Serendipity collections. I created the black ribbon scallops using one of the We R Memory Keepers Sew Ribbons tools. The Disney font that I cut using my Silhouette is called Waltograph.

And I used this sketch provided at Club CK for their June challenge:
The June sketch from Club CK

Warrior Dash 2012

By Leave a Comment

WarriorDash_Daquila-Pardo

I created the Warrior Dash title and Viking helmet on my Silhouette.

Back in March Matt participated in his first obstacle/mud run, the Warrior Dash. It was a beautiful day, and we gathered with thousands of others in Splendora, Texas, for a 3.21-mile run peppered with 12 obstacles. While Matt did the hard work, I stood on the sidelines and shot photos of him with a telephoto lens.

I asked Matt to write the journaling for this one, and here’s what he said:
“Warrior Dash started out as a curiosity for me. Jeff, our personal trainer at the time, told us about two obstacle races he planned on running: Warrior Dash and Tough Mudder. It sounded interesting to me. A year later, I decided to fulfill a lifelong desire to be a runner. After training for several months, I decided to sign up for the Tough Mudder but couldn’t participate because of an injury. A few months later I signed up for the Warrior Dash. I started training for it fairly seriously by running a lot more. I felt pretty confident about the running portion of Warrior Dash, and in the end I did OK. My training for my next event, The Spartan Race in May, is much more serious and involves more strength-building exercises. These races are a blast, and I will probably do them all multiple times.”

I was fortunate to have had a beautiful day for capturing photos of the event. Of all the great shots I took, my favorite is the one of muddy, smiling Matt right after the race (in the upper right corner of the layout). Doesn’t he look happy? That’s the sign of a day well spent.

For the title treatment on this page I decided to create a Viking-style helmet (like in the Warrior Dash logo) on my Silhouette. And I’m making this cut file (in .studio format) available to anyone who thinks they could also use it (click on the image below to begin the download). If you download this file, I would love it if you’d leave me a comment to let me know.
A Silhouette cut file for you to download