A Hot and Dusty Attic

Hi there,

As I write this it's stinking hot again. I love summer so I'm not really complaining but.....

Anyway, a cool breeze came in tonight so I scrapped away with the curtains billowing gently beside my scrap desk and a breeze wafting through. Wonderful!

What was also wonderful is that I was working on my February sketch layout for The Dusty Attic. Nadia provided a great sketch this month. Here it is:

I really wanted to use the new String of Hearts frame from Dusty Attic on this one so I switched the position of the circular element from that shown on the sketch. This chippie is popular among the ladies of the design team and they have already done such a terrific job with it so I thought I'd try to do something different. I wondered if it would suit a really modern, arty layout. Here's what I made:

There are a lot of Dusty Attic products on this page. I've used five different paints, Clear Gloss Varnish, the String of Hearts frame and three different diamond shapes.

To create the painted part of the background I applied four paints using four different methods:

1. I first swiped Oceania acrylic paint vertically over the page with an old credit card. This is my new fave colour - it's stunning!

 2. I then used the edge of the credit card to roughly apply Faded Denim paint.

3. When the others colours were dry (you might have to hurry that last thick application with a dryer) I then dabbed Jungle Green paint onto my fingertips and smeared it over the other colours.

4. I then applied a fourth colour, Alabaster, by simply running the nozzle of the bottle in lines down the page.

Dusty Attic paints dry really quickly, so they're perfect for mixed-media backgrounds.

Next I did a bit of stamping using blue and black ink and lineal and diamond stamps. I then sat the Small Trellis chipboard over the background and sprayed white Dylusions through it. White Dylusions doesn't sit well on acrylic paint and it didn't really give me the triangular shapes I was after but with such a mixed-media background as this one is, it doesn't really matter anyway. I then ran plain and zigzag stitching up and down the page.

The final step in the background was to add diamonds from the large and small Argyle Panels. I painted these with Alabaster paint and used the Clear Gloss Varnish to glue them as it's super-strong and has a lovely fine nozzle for small pieces like these. I painted the String of Hearts frame with Soot paint and added some watercolour hearts leftover from another project.

Here are some close-ups:

I don't usually use sentiments as titles on my layouts but Nadia's sketch used one and I thought this sentiment suited the page.

Here are the products I used:

String of Hearts Frame set DA1017

 Trellis small DA1032

Argyle Panel large DA1010

Argyle Panel small DA1011

Dusty in Colour Clear Gloss Varnish DA0901

Dusty in Colour Oceania DA0912

Dusty in Colour Faded Denim DA0925

Dusty in Colour Jungle Green DA0920

Dusty in Colour Alabaster DA 0902

Dusty in Colour Soot DA0925

I hope you can create something special with this month's sketch! There are some extra goodies going out to this month's winner if you make your layout a Valentine's Day one.

Cheers,
Heather