Hey everyone it's Lauren here popping in today to share with you a layout for the hip kit club using their beautiful February project life cards and a few die cuts and as you can see there some black paint. Now I'm stepping a little bit out of my comfort zone with that black paint but I thought I would give it a go. I'm also being challenged to use some of the die cuts in the February kit and do some fussy cutting. So here you can see me just fussy cutting one of those project life cards out there and I'd already pre-cut fussy cut the larger flower custer that you can see behind my hand there. Now I just sat down the mojo started flying and then I'd started the layout and thought why am I not videoing this. So that's when I stopped there, paused it and set up the camera which is why I can see that I'd already fussy cut and applied the black paint. So this is a little bit different this layout. I have these two special photos my parents are renovating their new home so I had the pleasure of hosting them for a few weeks while those renovations were taking place. So we dragged Katie's king single bed into our master bedroom and she absolutely loved sleeping at the foot of her parents bed for those few weeks but each morning they Katie would take it upon herself to go and jump on Grimmie and Grendad whilst they were sleeping more so Grendad but Grimmie would be waking up at that time at the same time. But this morning Grendad got payback so he ended up waking before she did and coming and jumping on her to wake her up and I was lucky enough to capture these moments I was close by with my camera so I snapped some photos and I just loved them even the dog got a bit of a surprise there. So I thought I'm going to scrapbook this special moment and this layout is a little bit of a different style. I'm using the full page which is usually not what I do and of course this black paint. Now two people who have inspired me to use black paint on layouts and in my art journal are Adele from Inky Quill so I encourage you to pop over and check out her fabulous channel and Lisa Oxley she's a mixed media artist and she's never frightened of using black and I am. So I channeled a bit of Inky and a bit of Lisa and applied that black paint but as you can see caution takes over here and I thought I'm not sticking anything down until I've done my journaling because I thought if I stuff this up I'm just going to slide it off and all I've wasted is a quarter of a piece of white card stock so I trim it off and that black paint would just disappear and I would continue my normal style of scrapbooking with the photos that I had there. So I thought this is a bit of a roundabout way because I usually add my journaling last but this time I'm applying it first just on the safe side. How do you guys go with black paint? Do you use it on your scrapbooking pages? Do you use it in your art journals? Let me know but if you're like me and have a bit of a crazy fear about black paint well you know this is one way of China sort of delve into the black paint world but without going bit too crazy and that's by adding your journaling first and then if it all stuffs up it doesn't really matter. So I've told that nice little story that I just shared with you in that journaling and sometimes it's really nice to share a story on your layouts. Other times it's not needed you might be incorporating it into your project life albums and those stories are being told elsewhere or some photos just you don't want to add a whole story but these these couple of photos were special and I wanted to share that story. So with these Fussycut elements the black paint the white pen I was able to really highlight this little bit of journaling and it still not take away from the photos there. So those Fussycut elements I just wanted to border that black paint. I didn't I wanted to make sure it was still the black was still poking out but also didn't want large black clusters so I just added a little bit with my white pen there it's a uni ball white pen I find that fabulous working on darker colors and I've just added some hand clustered little flowers there just to add that bit of drawing those flowers into that black paint as well and just making sure that extra black spaces used up there and here I am just simple layering techniques. The photos are black and white and I've printed them off with a white border so I've already had a border around it but I just wanted those little pops of color on the side just to bring in those flower clusters and sort of make the layout all tie together. The black paint is really strong on the layout and I think if I used color photos and not black and white photos it probably wouldn't have looked as good. So drawing that black element throughout your entire layout is sometimes a great idea so I've got my black project life card there I've got my black and white photos and that sort of balances out that big heavy side there as you can see and it sort of all comes together really easily. So this is a nice simple little layout just those fussy cut elements having those beautiful flowers has has meant that I haven't had to do much work in embellishing those project life cards would have to be my favourite in any of the project life kits that we've got from the hit clip card to date and I actually had a hard time cutting them up because I really wanted to use them in my project life album but I knew that these bright flowers would need to help me with that big that black paint so I sacrificed my project life album for the greater cause of this layout. Just here's a couple of die cut elements there I'll cut little flag there and I just soften that edge I've just putting a little flower cluster there I've also out of the carter bella die cut pack that you see me floating there I just grabbed a journaling prompt and ripped it inside I ripped it in half and either side was placed to help mount that photo and bring it off the page a little there. So here I am just wanting to finish off with a few little extra embellishment so these cute little puffy hearts from the I think it's the Ula la crepe paper collection we're just super sweet and that little banner there just finished it off. So here you guys that's my layout I'm still trying to put stuff on but end up saying no we're finished I hope you like it I hope you've been brave to use some black paint on a layout or in your art journaling and check out the hip-kit club if you're not already subscribed go check it out you'll love it the kits are amazing each month take care guys bye