2 photos

Piano recital

April 9, 2015 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I was fortunate as a girl to be given piano lessons. Our church’s organist, Ms. Shimmels, would come to our house weekly and patiently work with me on theory and technique. I’ll admit that I loved it and hated it. I really wanted to be better at playing, but daily practice sessions were so hard to get excited about. It’s the age-old conundrum of the wannabe.

I loved to perform, though, so I did get excited about recitals. I practiced the heck out of my recital music, learning it so well that I would get to the end of the piece and not remember the details of having played it (like when you drive a familiar route on auto pilot).

Each year Ms. Shimmels’ students came together to perform for their families at the Fine Arts Association in Willoughby, and these photos are from our recital in the summer of 1978.

It was a really big deal to me, and my family treated it that way, too. My mom made this sweet yellow dress for the occasion (as she often did for my recitals over the years). And two of my aunts (Mary Lou and Rose) drove from Pennsylvania to be there for it.

I remember quite a lot about this special day, considering it was almost 37 years ago, and I’m grateful for everyone who worked together to make it happen.

Product/technique notes

I followed this Let’s Get Sketchy January sketch quite closely:

Most of the patterns I used are from Jillibean Soup’s “Chilled Cucumber Soup” collection. I designed the title and cut it on my Silhouette.

Hello spring

March 26, 2015 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 6 Comments

Oh, how I love the return of bluebonnets and baby leaves…

Product/technique notes

I was inspired by My Scraps and More sketch #101 to create this page with two small photos, a large title and a few tiny embellishments. The paper is an ancient one from KI Memories, and the 3D embellies are from several years ago in the dollar bin at Michael’s.

Come in & warm up

February 19, 2015 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Although we hit 69 degrees today in Austin, Texas, and I actually saw redbud trees starting to bloom, I didn’t grow up with such days in February! The winters of my childhood in northeast Ohio were cold and snowy, just as I think most kids would have it, if they had the choice. At least I liked it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind a few days of beautiful snow and blue skies now. But I probably can’t expect those any time soon, so I’ll just scrap photos of a time when I had them and be thankful that I did.

Product/technique notes

All the Authentique “Cozy” products I used to create this layout came from the Back Porch Memories February kit (thank you to BPM for allowing me to be a part of their design team through March), and I followed this Rochelle Spears sketch.
Back Porch Memories sketch by Rochelle Spears

Never stop seeking

January 11, 2015 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

In January 1993 I started on an adventure that would change my life, as most journeys manage to do.

Being unfulfilled in my job as a conference planner and taken with the idea of becoming a corporate trainer, I had applied over the summer for graduate school at my undergrad alma mater, Ohio University. In November (on my birthday, no less) I received word from the School of Communication that I had been accepted for late admittance and was being granted a fellowship! What a wonderful memory I have of opening that letter and bursting into tears at the happy news.

So I gave notice at work, finished out my time there and then packed up my belongings and headed south in my powder blue Geo Prizm to Athens, Ohio. The left photo is of me in my parents’ driveway, ready to begin my adventure.

My apartment wasn’t going to be ready in time for the winter quarter to begin, so my friends, Rich and Lori Ozmun, generously allowed me to roost with them for the first few weeks. The right photo is from the day I moved to my own place. Mom, Dad and Phil had come to Athens to help me with the move. That’s me; the Ozmuns; my brother, Phil; and the Ozmuns’ neighbor, Christian, who soon after this became my grad school boyfriend.

Going to graduate school really did change my life. My world expanded: I made wonderful friends, learned from leaders in the field and changed as you always do when you immerse yourself in something new.

Product/technique notes

I used patterned papers from BoBunny’s “Souvenir” line because I thought the travel theme worked so well for my personal journey story. All the products on this page are from the Back Porch Memories January kit, for whom I am guest designing for the next few months.

Birthday sleepover

November 24, 2014 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

We all have certain techniques that especially catch our eye when they’re used on a layout, and for me paper folding is one of them.

I seem unable to pass up a closer look at a page with folds! So to add a little extra dimension and personality to my page I incorporated a faux quilting folding technique into my design. If you want to see more details about creating this look, I have a tutorial in an older post for a layout that uses the same technique.

For my 11th birthday in 1977 Mom and Dad let me have a slumber party with a few friends: Jill Trzaska, Renee Poplik and Margaret Wissman. One of my fun memories from this night is when we performed a song-and-dance routine for my family (bottom photo). We called ourselves “The Oreos” because of the plastic Oreo party favor necklaces we all wore. Pretty clever, eh?

Product/technique notes

The products on this page all came from the November Back Porch Memories kit and are from American Crafts’ “Shimelle” line. I created the title on the Silhouette and designed it to incorporate the record die cut from the kit as the O.

Note: I’m submitting this to the Paper Issues “Let’s Get This Party Star-ted and Par-ty Hear-ty” link party.

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