Aloha Friday everyone! Today I am talking about my first layout using a brand new kit that arrived to brighten a very blah week. Why was this week blah? Well, nothing specific- just everyday “adulting” and 3 little letters: I R S. I don’t know anyone who feels excited to be alive on tax day, do you? Even those people getting money back have to face the reality of how much of their hard earned money was sucked up by Uncle Sam over the past year. Anyway, as one of my BFF’s Lacey said the other day, and this quote should really go down in history: “When one is feeling anxious, one should scrapbook I think.” So true Lacey, so true!
Do you have a routine when a new kit first arrives to “break” the kit by creating your first project with it? I always have a hard time with this. Once I go through everything and sniff that new paper smell and drool over all the pretty stuff I have a hard time deciding what to do first. The arrival of the May Clique Kits Riga kit was no different.
The Riga kit contains a beautiful selection of papers and they are actually from multiple collections each with its own concept. Even though the papers coordinate with each other the details behind the little phrases give away that they each have something a little different to offer. For example, the papers and embellishments from the Pinkfresh Studio Case of the Blah’s collection are all about being real and expressing the vulnerability we all know is there in being authentic and documenting even when we didn’t wake up and “be amazing.” So it was the concept of this collection that spoke to me the most and I decided to do my first layout focusing on how I was really feeling that day. I had a selfie which was the perfect photo for this layout.
My plan was to use a simple mask/stencil stripe pattern (Stampin’ Up) to create a bold black painted foreground to layer over the gorgeous gray wonky grid like patterned paper that I chose as a background.
Whenever I get something new, I seem to always want to use it right away and this Wild Hibiscus stamp (Altenew) was on my desk. I stamped a bunch of flowers on some watercolor paper and then used my Kuretake paints to add some of the color palette in Riga so they would work with whatever other embellishments I decided to pull out of the kit. I adhered them in layers at different heights for depth and texture.
The fabric die cuts included in the kit are really nice- I love having texture but not bulk!
Now that I completed my first layout, I am feeling inspired to go ahead and kill this kit this month! And I hope that by documenting this selfie with these messages someday my girls will see this and remember they are enough and beautiful as they are, no apologies for imperfections and flaws, and no shame in an ordinary life well lived.
-xGia
Love this Gia!