August Kit – Gia Aloha

Clique Kits August Pep Rally

Well, it’s official. I no longer post on this blog unless it’s a Pep Rally day! How sad is that? Still, I am really grateful that this monthly event for my kit club Clique Kits happens, or I just might let this passion-scrapbooking- totally disappear from my life! I really hope I can carve out more time to create and blog- it is so much fun to be part of this online community of creative friends around the world.

This month we are sharing projects using the August kit: Rio. It was kind of fun to have a kit whose name was inspired by an ancient global sports competition that only happens every 4 years! Rio was one of my favorite kits this year. Details on winning prizes can be found on the Clique Kits blog post (see link below). If you are a blogger who enjoys doing blog hops and posting your creations online, I highly recommend you visit the Clique Kits website where you can read about the many benefits of subscribing.

August 2016 Line-Up

If you get lost or need info go back here—->Clique Kits
Gia Lau <—-You are here
Go here next—->Erica Thompson
*Kat Benjamin
*Marcia Dehn-Nix
Kim Allen
*Maryam Perez
*Caroli Schulz
*Melissa Vining
*Leeann Pearce
Sara Mishler
Donna Espiritu
Leigh Ann Odynski

An Instax Mini Album

First let me say that I have had an Instax Mini 8 camera since Christmas. The thought of spending $1.00 per print (that is approximately how much the “film” costs) -I’m not gonna lie-made me really hesitant to snap a lot of the time! What if it didn’t come out as expected? What if I end up with lots of wasted time and money? The camera sat on the shelf except at birthday parties when my kids would take it out for their impromptu photo booths. At least they could have fun, because they didn’t think about the cost!

Then I decided to try the Instax Share printer, which I finally got for my birthday this August- which uses the same film to produce mini polaroids, but prints images directly from a source- such as my iphone! Yay! I love this so much better, and did not hesitate to print out an album full of pics, knowing in advance how the photos would turn out!

Disclaimer**

If you cringe at the thought of a somewhat corny, lovey-d0vey album featuring two “old people’s ridiculous selfies” –that is a direct quote from my teenagers– then you might want to skip to the next blog (Ahem. You have been warned.)

Everything I used to fill the pages came from the August kit Rio , plus a couple of store item add ons (the Amy Tangerine rubber embellishments , the blue acrylic heart on the cover, and one pineapple die cut from the Clique into Summer kit)

I just love a little chunky mini that fits in the palm of my hand and is FULL of memories. Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the rest of the hop!

-xoGia

Clique Kits August Pep Rally: Featuring Ambrosia

Hi friends! I am very excited to particpate in this month’s Pep Rally! This month’s Clique kit Ambrosia featured the Pink Paislee Citrus Bliss collection and so much more! This kit was so inspiring to me to get started creating again and I have been working on this mini-album documenting my recent long weekend in Kauai. You should have come from the Clique Kits Blog. Here is the full line-up:

Clique Kits

Here—>Gia
Erica <—Next
Sophie*
Sandy G.*
Megan
Emma Prescott
Mariah
Cassandra*
Donna*
Aliza*
Kim Allen
Tyra
Karrie
Evi Ortes
Hannah

So I have written a lot so far about this mini album and today’s post for the Pep Rally will be a continuation of the series. Since this is a brand new blog it isn’t too hard to find the last two posts if you are interested 🙂

For today’s post, I decided to show you a watercolor technique to make a multicolored or ombre colored pineapple with a diamond cross hatch pattern much like the pineapple design in the Pink Paislee collection. I used this technique to create a personalized layout in my mini album featuring a photo of my son Jesse.

Here we go!

And now let’s head over to see what great project Erica has today!

Documenting My Trip to Kauai with Clique Kits

This project consists of multiple parts, so I am going to divide it into more than one post. In this post I will give an overview of the project!

For my birthday weekend I had a chance to go to a neighbor island with my husband Joel and my youngest son Jesse, age 7 1/2. It is really rare that we get to spend quality time with any one of the children, let alone with each other. Needless to say, this was a really special treat! The stars just happened to align that weekend for us, so off we went to Kauai. I have been keeping a travel album of our visits to all of the other Hawaiian islands, but I was so blown away by the beauty of Kauai I had to make a special album just to dedicate to this trip.

I started the album with an empty 3-ring binder we had a very limited quantity of in the Clique Kits store way back when. I loved it for the gold debossed flamingos on the outside cover and the lovely salmon color. I started filling the album with cardstock, watercolor paper, acetate, and some Simple Stories pocket pages trimmed down by one column.

I decided that I would keep repeating certain motifs throughout the album, so that even though it is a very eclectic album, certain themes are coherent. Some of the repeated items are pineapples, watermelons and other fruit from the Ambrosia kit (I especially loved the artwork by Lacey Gasper for this project), flamingos, and Palm fronds. The colors are all in keeping with the colors from the Ambrosia kit palette, which included salmon, pinks, aquas, greens, yellows, and orange. The add on paper pack from Kesi Art with a Hawaiian theme was perfect for this project, and so were the little pineapple and watermelon dies.

In the next post, I will show you how I used some watercolors and other paints to personalize my album by creating some one-of-a-kind artwork for some of the layouts in the album.

E Komo mai! Welcome to my new blog!

August is my birthday month, so I decided it is the perfect month to make a fresh start on a brand new blog. I will save the story of why I have been too busy to blog for another day and get right to my first project. I already shared this layout on the Clique Kits Instagram, so it isn’t brand new. I need to open a new personal Instagram also, to go along with this new blog. Baby steps, right?

This layout was made with my August kit Ambrosia. It was love at first sight for me and this pair of Vans tennis shoes. Now we go everywhere together. This kit featured the Pink Paislee Citrus Bliss collection. I have been spying the trend of what I have called the Neo-Lily Pulitzer trend in scrapbooking this year for a really, really long time. If any of you were followers of my old blog, you know I used to write a column all about trends, and I predicted we would be falling in love with fruit, especially pineapples, as well as things like flamingos for quite some time now! Speaking of trends, I LOVE to follow the trends in paper patterns and embellishments as much if not more than I love to follow trends in fashion. How about you? I would love to know if you would be interested in my starting another column about trends on THIS blog. Let me know in the comments please!