Hi friends, it’s Theresa here and today I wanted to share with you some advanced techniques for using digital products to help tell more of your story in your hybrid layouts. We are going to play with patterned papers and elements from the Midnight Apothecary digital collection, and this is the layout we will be creating.

The main story I am telling here is of Asher and River in 2020 playing with these glow in the dark glasses. They are like the bracelets and necklaces that you get that you can snap and then they will glow for you. The kids had put them together and then wanted to go into the dark hallway to see if they did in fact glow! My goal for this layout was to use products to play up the glow in the dark factor, and here are some of the ways I did that.

Start the layout with the dark, moody papers from Midnight Apothecary. These patterned papers set and instant deep color palette and the perfect Halloween vibe.
Layer on gold elements from the Midnight Apothecary collection directly to the patterned papers for dramatic effect. The gold stars and moon definitely give the appearance of glowing against the moody papers!

Instead of using the frames for the photo itself, I used them as the home base for the photo and other embellishments. This gave me the idea to add a reflective surface inside, as if they were mirrors reflecting the colors of the patterned papers. I did this by creating a rectangle and an oval in Photoshop, and then adding a Gradient Layer from the FX tool in the Layers menu. Within the Gradient tool you can select a variety of premade color palettes, and the purples gave perfect options for this page!

Use the gold word art for the title, again using the background as the perfect contrast.
The butterflies add more subtle storytelling, as the bottom half of their wings look a bit like the glow in the dark glasses the kids are wearing!

I hope this layout has given you some fun ideas for storytelling with digital products! I have a great tutorial and process video for you, which you can view here: