vintage photos

On a bright cloud of music shall we fly?

April 12, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

This lovely song from "The King and I" made the perfect title for this layout.

This layout holds one of those photos from my past that has no specific story behind it yet says so much about my early life.

It’s July 1970, and Phil and I are dancing in the living room. We danced together a lot back then. In fact, Mom tells me that when we were little she and Dad hardly needed to turn on the TV in the evenings because Phil and I were such good entertainment. How sweet is that? She says that we would dance or just chase each other in circles around the room until we flopped down in exhaustion—and that was good enough for them. Now that’s something only a loving parent could say and mean it!

There’s a challenge going on over at My Scrapbook Nook to use a quote as a title. So, I created this title element on my Silhouette to go with my photo because I’ve always loved “Shall we dance?” from The King and I and wanted to make anyone looking at this layout hear the music in their heads.

Easter together

April 8, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

This is a special photo because all 12 cousins were together for it.

My dad was the middle of three children in his family, who always told him he was the thorn between two roses because he was flanked by sisters. This 1969 photo includes all 12 of Dad and his siblings’ children (Nana and Papa’s grandchildren). All of us together (mostly) posing for a photo on Easter morning. Phil and I, the youngest in the clan, are in the lower left corner. It actually looks like our older cousins are having to tether us to keep us in the photo!

I created this layout based on a scraplifting challenge at BasicGrey’s blog. In place of the hearts punched out of several patterns, I decided to create my background with a Martha Stewart All Over Punch. I punched several rows of designs out of brown cardstock before backing them with six different patterned papers from the BG Sweet Threads 6×6 pad. It creates a lovely quilt-like effect.

I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t recommend trying this technique on a layout about just any photo because it took so long to complete. But for this special photo I’m happy to have taken the time. In fact, keep a lookout for a post coming soon, where I’ll do a review of the Martha Stewart All Over Punch tool and offer some tips for using it.

For the love of the game

April 4, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 5 Comments

These photos of me in my softball uniform are from 1977 and 1978.

As a kid I was always very athletic…in my head. In my mind’s eye I made dazzling shoe-top catches and hit long shots over the fence, but in reality I was pretty awkward. I tried really hard, don’t mistake me, but my efforts usually produced boringly average results.

Even so, most of the time (except for the occasional bouts of ennui I experienced at softball practices) I loved being involved in the Willoughby Baseball League. For one thing, my brother was on a boys’ team during that same time, and I liked that we both had WBL uniforms, practices and games down at Todd Fields. I also loved having my family come to my games. If I close my eyes and really put myself back…in my uniform and mitt, hands on my knees in the outfield, sun on my back and feeling silly chanting “Hey, batter batter!”…I can still feel a little of that nervous aliveness that comes from performing in front of loved ones. That feeling that, even though you know they will tell you how well you did no matter what happens, you yearn to do something spectacular for them to see.

I don’t remember how many years I played in the league (these photos are from 1977 and 1978), but I do know that I gained a lot by being part of it. I learned to get along with a different group of girls than those I went to school with, to practice even when I didn’t feel like it, to care about contributing to the team’s success and to overcome my nervousness enough to play my part in that success. Yup, team sports can do all that!

I based this layout on the following PageMaps sketch from February and used papers from the BasicGrey “Oliver” 6×6 pad:

The PageMaps sketch I referenced while making this layout.

Hippity hoppity

March 29, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Easter morning 1968.

For this layout I used photos from Easter morning in 1968. I am still in my jammies and just discovering the big basket of goodies the Easter Bunny left me at my grandparents’ house!

I used the 200th sketch from Creative Scrappers blog to create this layout, and I’m entering it in their challenge.

Hush little baby

March 27, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

I gathered up all my baby dolls one day and created beds for the whole lot.

The photo in this layout makes me laugh because it reveals a little bit about what I was like as a child. My parents had bought something that had packing material in it, and seeing its potential I used it to “build” beds for all my baby dolls. I’m sure I felt very pleased with myself once I had worked out all the necessary design decisions and finally had everyone tucked in for a nap.

Isn’t it wonderful that my mom snapped a shot of this? Thanks Mom!

I used this great sketch provided at the Artful Delight blog to inspire my layout:

Artful Delight sketch

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