The Paper Studio

Young Crafters Unite blog hop!

July 1, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 81 Comments

Hi everyone, and welcome to the next stop on the Young Crafters Unite Blog Hop! If you’re following along the hop you should be arriving here from Chari Moss’ blog (She makes such adorable cards!). If you aren’t a hopper but want to join in the fun you can start at the beginning by visiting the Young Crafters Unite website.

Why do I consider myself a young crafter?

I always feel younger than the calendar says I am. I really believe that being “young” or “old” is up to us. So I act the way I want to feel. And crafting is one of the things I do that helps me stay young. Shopping for crafting supplies surely must reduce wrinkles because it makes me giddy like a little girl. And the feeling I get when I start to cut, stamp and glue things together…well, if my hair was longer I would put it up in pigtails! I suspect all crafters are young crafters. 🙂

My “favorite thing” project

We were asked to create a new project using our favorite things, and I chose to create a layout using two favorite things:

These photos are of my brother, Phil, and me at the baby pool in our hometown. I love everything about these photos: Phil’ls scrunchy smile, our darling bathing suits pushed low on our round bellies, our suntanned skin, our happy faces and my memories of many hours spent at that pool together with our mom. Wow, these are awesome photos!
I recently created a tutorial about crocheting on your scrapbook pages, so that’s my new favorite technique! I’ve used it on this layout to create the sun element. It takes some extra time, so I’ll probably save it for more special photos/memories, but I love the even more handmade and vintage feel it gives to my layouts. 🙂

At the Pool highlights a few special photos of me and my brother in the summer of 1970.

More of my personal favorites

I thought I would also share just a few more of my recent layouts and cards because they are all about being or staying young, and they make me happy to look at!

I think you are…
I made this little set of 2×3-inch cards so that I could occasionally pop a love note in my husband’s laptop bag before he leaves the house. Why does food with faces make us smile?

I think you are...hot, cool, sweet and cheesy!

I am I because my little dog knows me
I can’t help it—I love this layout. That photo of our precious family dog, Spenser, is from 1991 when he was only a few months old. We all adored him and he adored us. And I think this Gertrude Stein quote is awesome.

I think this Gertrude Stein quote is all this layout needed to capture my feeling.

He will go far
This is a photo from 2000, when our nephew Jerad was only 4. I thought this new October Afternoon line, Rocket Age, would work perfectly to highlight all the potential I see in his little face.

This outer space-themed paper just seemed like the perfect way to showcase a child's potential.

Thank you so much for hopping by today. Don’t forget to leave a comment on this post because there are prizes up for grabs for some lucky participants. Randomly selected commenters will have the opportunity to win prizes from Simon Says Stamp, Paper Smooches and Lawn Fawn! Comment by Monday, July 4th at 11:59PM CST to win; winners will be announced Wednesday, July 6th at noon CST.

The next young crafter on this hop is Kelly Latevola (This woman is a master with Distress Inks!). Thanks again for stopping by, and I do hope you’ll come back again soon.

PageMaps’ My Little Shoebox sketch contest

June 13, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

Every once in a while I run across a sketch that really makes me yearn to pull together some photos and products and get scrapping. This PageMaps sketch had that effect on me when I saw it on their blog. It’s their June contest sketch, and I knew I wanted to play along.

PageMaps June 2011 sketch for contest

A few of the reasons I like this sketch so much and can see using it again are that it features four photos (so you can really tell a story with them), calls for a few nice pops of patterned paper and still leaves a good amount of white space for the eyes to rest a bit while looking at it. It accomplishes a lot in a 12×12 canvas!

This is the layout I created based on the sketch. The photos are from Memorial Day weekend, just a few weeks ago. When Matt and I started talking about the kinds of things we could do during the holiday weekend, Matt suggested, “We could drive to Fredericksburg for the day so you can go to that scrapbook store you like.”

Here is my entry for the PageMaps June 2011 sketch contest.

Now if that’s not proof of love, I don’t know what is. 🙂

You cannot win if you do not play

November 23, 2010 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

For a long time I’ve been a lurker online. I read blogs and shook my head, laughing at the funny things other crafters said. But I didn’t comment. I read product reviews and agreed or disagreed with the analysis. But I didn’t drop the reviewer a line about my opinion. I learned about scrapbook and card challenges and toyed with the idea of participating. But I didn’t send in my layouts for consideration.

However, with the start of this blog I decided that had to change. I had to stop lurking and start speaking up. And I admit that’s challenging for me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned to my husband, Matt, at his computer and told him what I thought of things I had read online. And after patiently (usually) listening to my diatribe, he would often say, “You should be blogging this stuff. Or at the very least you should comment on that person’s post.” At the mention of sharing my thoughts publicly I usually just turned back to my computer to read more of what others had written.

When it comes to the challenges and contests I really just haven’t thought I could compete with all the talent out there in the world. There are so many amazing layouts being posted every single day! But that was just a lame excuse for not having to expose myself to critique—or worse, to ridicule.

So I’ve ended that by starting to throw my hat into the ring every so often. It has been so motivating and much more fun than I expected it to be! I’ve even won a few times. Yay! But even more than the winning, I’m enjoying knowing that others are looking at my art. I just hadn’t realized how much that was missing from my process. I’m accustomed to finishing a layout, showing Matt for his approval, and then putting it in the appropriate album. Sort of a letdown, you know?

Well, last night I took the next step in this journey of making my crafting process more public and social. I submitted my work for consideration for a design team. Gulp.

The assignment was fun because it involved working with sketches, which I really love anyway. I liked the sketches, and I’m proud of my resulting layouts. So I feel like I won even if I’m not chosen for the team. Here are my submissions:

Baptized

Sunset cruise