The Constant Scrapper

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

3 photos

Fun and games

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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.

The Lord God made them all

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It’s already time for the June Sketches With a Twist challenge—the last design of my term with them. I am very proud to have created this sketch, although I’ll admit that it’s a little harder than usual, which is why I’ve included a tutorial below for making the Cathedral Window quilt pieces! Here’s a little peek at my new sketch:

The Sketches With a Twist June sketch

The twist this month is to incorporate fabric into your design. I’m not a seamstress (yet), so I used felt! Felt is fabric, isn’t it? 😉

Rescues_Daquila-Pardo

Every animal we have rescued stays in my heart.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.
~Cecil F. Alexander, Hymns for Little Children, 1848

Matt and I are rescuers. Animals in need find us, and we can’t turn away. It’s added a lot of joy to our lives to open ourselves to this avocation. And of course, with the joy comes a bit of pain because not all our rescues can be saved. As in most things that matter, though, the joy makes the pain worth enduring.

This layout features photos of just three of the animals we’ve helped:

  • The possum we named Head (after a character with a large head in So I Married an Ax Murderer). Sadly, Head was too injured by the car that hit him, and he did not make it.
  • The chicken Matt rescued from Mopac Highway and was promptly named…Mopac…before we found her a home on a little farm in Buda, Texas.
  • And the German short-haired pointer who we named Budro (for the dog in Grosse Pointe Blank) before placing him with the local German short-haired pointer rescue group.

My layout is intended to celebrate all the animals we’ve rescued and to symbolize the way they each add themselves to the quilt of our lives.

The tutorial

So you think this sketch looks intimidating? I’m here to help! After creating my layout with this sketch, I realized that I could probably help others use it if I revealed a few of the measurements and techniques I used.

The three photos on this sketch are 3 inches from corner to corner, not 3 inches square. A square that measures 2⅛ will have a diagonal measurement of 3 inches, so that’s the size to which you should crop your photos.

For the nine Cathedral Window quilt pieces you see on the sketch, you’ll need to punch either nine 3-inch circles of double-sided patterned paper OR nine 3-inch circles of single-sided patterned paper and nine 2-1/16-inch squares of different patterned papers. I wanted all my folded pieces to be the same pattern, so I used the second method for my quilt pieces.

Here's a template for the Cathedral Window quilt pieces you'll need to cut.

Place your 2-1/16-inch squares centered on your circle and score around the outside edges. Once you fold up the four edges you’ll have a 2⅛-inch square quilt piece.

Here is a template I created to help you place your quilt pieces (if you want to follow the sketch exactly). I used these measurements, and everything lined up just right! Click on this smaller image to download the full-sized version.

Here's a template for placing the Cathedral Window quilt pieces on your layout.

I really hope this tutorial is helpful to those of you who want to use my sketch. I am very happy with how my layout looks, so I hope you’ll try it with a few of your photos, too. And don’t forget to link up your page to the Sketches With a Twist challenge.

I’m lucky to have a friend like you

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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 Sketches With a Twist May 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. 😉

FriendLikeKathy_Daquila-Pardo

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).

Leap

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Twisted Sketches has revealed sketch #141, and the twist is “leap.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch and see all the other design team members’ beautiful examples. Then create something of your own and link it up!

Here is what I created using this great new sketch:

Leap_Daquila-Pardo

These are photos of me (and friends) during college that illustrate the quote I used as my title.

I just love using short quotes as titles for layouts, so when I saw that the twist on this sketch was “leap,” I went in search of a good quote I could sink my teeth into. I found several that inspired me, but I chose to use this one by David Herbert Lawrence (English writer, 1885-1930) because it also made me think of some old photos I had.
“Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.”

The photos this quote put me in mind of were from my college days. When else in our lives do we so often travel to the edge of knowledge and have to take a leap into our own unknown? The first photo is of my brother, Phil, me and my mom from freshman year. Mom was visiting us for Mother’s Weekend, and we had loads of fun. The second photo is of me with the three roommates I had during a wonderful summer internship program in New York City (lots of learning and leaping!). And the third photo is of me with some friends at the end of our junior year in college.

These are certainly not good photos; in fact they’re pretty terrible. But really, how many photos of you from the 1980s do you love? What’s important to me is that they represent memorable times of growth in my life and help me remember to travel to the edge as often as possible. The edge is uncomfortable and exciting. Sign me up for that!

So, this is my last layout as a design team member for Twisted Sketches. I have been enjoying the challenge of using Anam’s sketches and twists for a little over a year (you can see my very first DT layout here), and the time has just flown. I want to thank Anam for taking a chance on me. She was the first person to make me part of a design team, which means that she and her sketch site will always hold a special place for me. I thank her for believing in my design skills and adding to my confidence.