stamping

Flowers mean I love you

June 15, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

Today my mom is flying back from a 10-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This is a trip she has always dreamed of taking, so when she found out that one of her favorite priests in town was going to lead a small group of people there, she didn’t even really have to think about it. She made her reservation and packed her bags.

This means that she just spent 10 days visiting those significant places all Christian children learn about: Nazareth, Cana, the Sea of Galilee, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane…you get the idea. Yeah, this was a BIG trip.

Now, I’d like to be at the airport to welcome her home with a fistful of hand-cut flowers. But because I live 2000+ miles away I made her a card with hand-cut flowers instead! I can’t wait to hear all the stories, Mom!

Welcome home, Mom!

I am also entering this card in this month’s Young Crafters Unite challenge to make a card/project using a flower or a floral image.

I’m lucky to have a friend like you

May 1, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

Happy May Day! The May Sketches With a Twist sketch and design team sample layouts are now live on the blog. I am very proud to have created the sketch and really love all the design team’s samples based on it! Here’s a little peek at my new sketch:

The twist this month is to incorporate hand or machine stitching into your design. So I did a running stitch around the edge of my title treatment, which set it off nicely. You know, I don’t often use word/sentiment stamps on my layouts (like I mean to do when I buy the stamps), but as I was working on this page my glance just happened to fall on the Hello Friend stamp set from Lawn Fawn, and it really was perfect for my subject! So the lesson here, boys and girls, is that there are benefits to having a messy scrap space. 😉

I created sketch #5 for Sketches With a Twist, on which this layout is based.

Kathy was my best friend for several years in grade school. We were in classes together, in the same Girl Scout troop and spent nights over at each other’s houses. She was the kind of friend that I could be my nerdy self with and not feel nerdy. She was fun, kind, studious and athletic.

Out of all the time we spent around each other, it’s little tidbits that leap to mind when I think of her. Like the time we sat under a tree and drew our versions of our future dream homes. Or when we went shopping at the mall together, and even though she was a head taller than me (lucky girl), we insisted on buying the same exact outfit and wearing them on the same day. That had to have been hilarious to our families! Or when she showed me her new Loverboy Get Lucky album, (the one released in 1981 with the red leather pants and the crossed fingers) and that made her even cooler in my eyes.

Well, after grade school Kathy and I attended different high schools and then went off to different universities, so we didn’t see each other for years. We all know how that happens. But after college we reconnected by attending each other’s weddings, which was wonderful, and we send birthday and Christmas cards. But recently I had the opportunity to spend an entire day with Kathy and her family. Her younger sister, Jean, recently moved to San Antonio, which isn’t far from Austin. So when Kathy’s family flew in to spend spring break with Jean’s family, Matt and I made plans to head to San Antonio for a visit.

We had a wonderful day together. We all went to the Poteet Strawberry Festival, which is a huge event in the SA area. It was a hot, sweaty, windy day, which is why we look a bit disheveled in these photos. But it was just so nice to catch up! You know, a lot changes about people and their lives over the years, but a lot stays just as it is in grade school, too. Kathy is the same kind of person she was back when: she’s fun; it’s obvious she’s a kind and generous mother to her two girls and wife to Wray; and she cares passionately about doing her work well. She’s a very good person, and I am lucky to have a friend like her.

I hope you’ll head to the Sketches With a Twist blog to get the printable version of my sketch and play along (there are two prizes available each month).

Last year at ICS

April 28, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

That redo that you do

Are there any layouts in your albums that you would like to do over? Maybe you thought you were done with it, but when you looked at it later you weren’t thrilled. Or you put it aside unfinished because you just couldn’t make it come together to your liking.

I know I do.

And while I don’t think we should go through our albums and redo all the layouts on which we used older products or techniques that we’re no longer in love with (there are way too many new layouts to create), every so often I do think it’s worth pulling out an unsatisfactory page and “tweaking” it. Or outright starting over. In my mind, the ones that qualify for this treatment are the special photos—the one-time events and images of times past that can’t be recreated.

Version 1: Bleck!

Here is a layout I started a few years ago but never finished. It’s a 5×7 portrait of me from eighth grade, and nothing I was trying to do with it worked for me. So I set it aside thinking that I would pull it out on another day and that the best way to finish it would just occur to me. It never did.

This is my first try at a design with this photo. Wasn't working for me.

When I recently saw this sketch on the Designs by Ashley Rock blog, it made me think of my long-forgotten layout, and I decided to let my first version go into the darkness and start over with it.

The Ashley Rock sketch I referenced while making this layout.

Version 2: So much better!

This is the layout I came up with using the sketch. I’m so much happier with the final product than I would have been if I had insisted on finishing my first version!

I don't know about you, but I like this version a lot better!

So, what do you think? Should I have left well enough alone, or do you think my redo was worth it? Do you ever tweak or redo your pages?

Product/technique notes: Most of the papers and elements on this page came from the Simple Stories Elementary collection. I also used doily stamps from Studio Calico and Inkadinkado.

Sending warm fuzzies

April 5, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 10 Comments

I wanted to let the background on this card get most of the focus, so I kept the other elements understated.

I made this Easter card for my mom with two challenges in mind (Young Crafters Unite called for stitching, and A Blog Named Hero for using Hero Arts stamps):

Young Crafters Unite! sewing/stitching challenge

I stamped the background with watermark ink and clear embossed it. Then I applied four colors of distress ink to make the background design pop. I pierced all the center dots before doing a cross stitch with brown floss to cover the whole thing. Honestly, this took a good bit of time to stitch, so after all that work I didn’t want to take much of the focus off that background. So I cut a little bunny with my Silhouette, covered his cotton tail with Stickles and stamped my sentiment on a banner. And a card is born!

This close-up shot shows the detail of the stitched background.

These are the main materials I used to create this card.

My Take Twelve February layout

February 23, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Back in December when Ella Publishing was promoting their Take Twelve project, I decided to participate. I don’t do a Project Life album, so I thought this might be a good alternative. You take photos on the 12th of each month in 2012, and then do a layout with the 12 best.

There’s a Take Twelve layout challenge hosted by Ella Publishing each month, but I didn’t get mine done in time for the deadline. I seem to be taking baby steps on this project. I completely missed taking the photos on January 12th, so the fact that I took my photos on February 12th and created a layout is a big improvement. Maybe in March I’ll be able to finish my layout in time to enter the contest!

I'm a little late getting into the Take Twelve challenge with Ella Publishing, but I only missed January, so no worries.

Here is the journaling that explains my 12 photos:
Sunday, February 12, 2012:
We went to 11:30 Mass and then stayed to have breakfast tacos made by the Men’s Club. When we left church we were met with an icy rain, which always makes us giddy because it’s so rare in Texas. We took a photo of the progress that’s being made on construction of our new church before heading to the gym for a vigorous workout. Then we ran some errands—to HEB for a few groceries and to Redbox to return our movie from the night before (Conan—not too good). By the time we returned home, it was snowing lightly! I had to grab a shot of the snow in Matt’s hair. We spent the rest of the day doing housework and laundry before making a simple dinner and settling in front of the fire (with Oliver in his favorite spot) to watch the next installment of Downton Abbey (so good). Our nightly feral visitor, Wilson, showed up for a healthy meal before heading off to find a warm place to hole up for the night. It was just a normal, lovely Sunday spent together.

I used some older American Crafts papers that have a Valentine’s Day theme to them and followed two-page sketch #20 from the Sketch Support site.

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