3 photos

All the way from California, August 1969

August 11, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I was surfing the scrappy blogosphere the other day, and I came upon a site that was new to me called Back Porch Memories. It’s a community built around a monthly kit club, and it looks like a nice group of scrapaholics. 🙂

They posted a sketch challenge, which I find hard to resist, so here is what I posted based on the sketch by Becky Fleck:

These photos from 1969 capture my mother's parents' visit to our home in 1969.

The photos are from August 1969, when my mom’s parents flew in from California to spend a month with us in Ohio. I remember being really excited about having them come “all the way from California,” hence the layout’s title. I was about 2.5 years old, and Phil was about 1.5.

Celebrating mother, maman, mommy, amma, mama

May 8, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Twisted Sketches blog is celebrating the achievement of its 100th sketch today, and so the whole design team has done layouts about the concept of “celebration.” I could think of nothing more deserving of celebration today than my mother.

This layout is dedicated to all those little idiosyncrasies that make a loved one even more dear to us. Just a few (I don’t want to make her too uncomfortable when she reads this!) of my mom’s quirks include:

very animated story telling (see the photos below)
acting as if she didn’t hear what you said so she can repeat your words back to you, twisted into something funny
believing it’s wasteful of time to be early to anything
loving when family members poke fun at her and urging them to do it more

I love you Mom! And I wish we could be together today.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Here is sketch #100, on which my layout was based. But I urge you to go to the Twisted Sketches site to play along this week because there’s a $25 prize up for grabs!

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This is sketch #100 from www.twistedsketches.com

And now are you game for a tiny bit of education about the word “mama?” I found a short article that explains why sounds close to “mama” appear in so many languages (link removed due to site having been hacked) and thought you might enjoy it.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

Came a cavalier: three-photo layout

January 24, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I got some scrapbooking done this weekend, which makes it more likely that I’ll call it a good one. 🙂 I was inspired to use these photos from last April, when this cute little orange tabby started making regular visits to our backyard. He had obviously been owned before because he was fixed and comfortable with people. After spending time unsuccessfully looking for his family, we decided to adopt him. He’s a handsome boy. And he’s got tons of personality. He’s very affectionate and the funny kind of trouble maker, which is a great combo. He’s a keeper.

The journaling reads: Once it became clear that this darling boy didn’t have a home, we brought him inside to share ours. We named him Tristan, after the hero in a book I read years ago: “Came a Cavalier” by Frances Parkinson Keyes.

Came a cavalier: The story of naming Tristan

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

Scrapbook PageMaps 2 sketch contest

November 14, 2010 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I love, love, love to scrapbook using sketches. I visit sketch sites online for ideas. I sketch my own ideas and follow them. And I use every nice book of sketches that I can get my hands on.

So, of course, I love Becky Fleck’s PageMaps sketches. She puts out new sketches on pagemaps.com at the first of each month, and she also publishes books of her work. I purchased her first book when it came out a few years ago, and I love it! Now her second book is out, and she’s holding a layout contest with her new book as the prize. Just try to keep me from playing along with that!

Here is the sketch:

PageMaps contest sketch

And here is my layout based on it:

First days

I really enjoyed using this sketch, and even if I don’t win the prize I’m thrilled to have completed another layout about my childhood to add to my album.

Note: I’m submitting this to the Paper Issues “You rule the school” link party.

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