Do you ever get overwhelmed by all those die cut Ephemera that come in your kits?  I assure you, you aren’t alone in this!!  When I first receive my Hip Kit, I am full of excitement, I get it all out, I drool over it for a bit and then reality sets in, how am I going to organise all this and use it all up? For me as I am a visual person, I grab a divided serving dish (purposely bought for die cut storage whilst I am creating with a kit of course!) and dump it all out in there so I can ‘see’ it all with the aim of using it all up.  Because as we all know there will be more gorgeous die cuts arriving in the next kit.

Today, I have a layout to share using the January 2017 Hip Kits:

Okay now, we need to figure out how to use all the die cuts on your layout without overwhelming your page.  For me this means I am going to layer those suckers up!   Don’t get stressed about ‘seeing’ the whole die cut on your page.  As you can see below, I have added the gold butterfly under the corner of the patterned paper and my photo and then I have added some word stickers on top of that.

Now let’s think outside the box, don’t forget that you can negative space from a die cut for something a little different – I have used the negative space of the ‘ampersand’ on this layout tucked in behind the bottom right of my photo.

Lastly, I really liked the word ‘dreamy’ die cut but it was a bit large and overwhelming on my page so I tucked it under my layered photo so you can still read what it says but overall it was less dominating.

I finished off my layout by adding a title using the Studio Calico Thickers from the Embellishment Kit and created a border around the page.   Because I like hoarding Thickers (a whole new blog post could be dedicated to this!), it is a mission of mine to get more of them on my page.  In this instance, I found the Thickers work a bit like journaling on my page as well as a design element and because I have left them in a natural white state they blend and don’t take over the page.

I hope that I have inspired you to empty out those packets of Ephemera and start layering  up those die cuts on your layouts. Thanks for stopping by the blog today!

Michelle xx