Die Cut Mania with Eileen Hull Designs

Hi everyone and welcome. This month's theme is Die Cut Mania where the team are sharing tips, tricks and techniques for using with your dies. I know we are all familiar with using our Eileen dies to cut regular coloured and patterned paper but have you thought about using some of those other fun techniques for decorating your die cuts? As part of today's tutorial I reached for some crackle glaze and used the results to create backgrounds for several journal pages.

I started by using PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze as directed with dark and contrasting pale shades of PaperArtsy Fresco Finish Chalk Paints on thin card to create a crackled look. You could also employ your embossing powders, stencilling, stamping and more to make your own decorative paper too. I would recommend using thin card/thick paper to ensure your your more intricate dies can cut through perfectly. You'll see below how I've cut some of the paper with Eileen's Sizzix Thinlits 'Heart Mandala' Die.

Once you've got your die cut created use it as a template to draw onto your journal page. Work out where you want to put your die cut and then draw/paint/colour the shape to make a background. It's a great way of adding a delicate pop of colour onto an otherwise neutral page.

Glue your Crackle Glazed die cut over the painted background before adding your stencilling and stamping - Eileen's 'Snail Mail Postage' Stamp Set is perfect for this.

And finally create your focal point; I wanted to mount a Rebekah Meier designed butterfly on something and found a piece of book paper that I'd previously die cut an Eileen tag from. A piece of vellum, embossed and inked using Eileen's Sizzix 3D Embossing Folder 'Vintage Buttons', worked well in the tag void and a little stencilling and stamping finished off the piece.

And here's the finished journal page; I used handles fussy cut from Eileen's Sizzix 3D Embossing Folder 'Silverware' to decorate the facing page and also popped on a few postage stamp shapes cut using Eileen's new Sizzix Thinlits 'Mini Slimline & Tickets' Die Set.

Here's a second journal page using the same techniques, this time with Eileen's Sizzix Thinlits 'Tile Alphanumeric' Die. Notice how some of the die cut postage stamp shapes have been embossed and painted whilst Glossy Accents has been applied to the die cut buttons.

My final journal page is a single page at the front of this book so I wanted to add one of Eileen's stamped library cards in a pocket envelope. To act as a background the crackle glazed paper has been die cut with the Sizzix Thinlits 'Skinny Mini Elements' Die and once again the page beneath has been painted. More of Eileen's stamped elements have been layered up to add even more interest to the page, including her 'Vintage Damask' design.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you feel inspired to try using lots of your mixed media techniques on paper so you can die cut them for your own journals. Make sure to check out all the fantastic projects from the rest of Eileen's team members - links to their posts can be found on Eileen's blog throughout the month.

For now thanks for visiting,

Jenny xxx