You Hold the Key to My Heart - ScrapThat! November Kit Layout

Today, I am revealing the details and close-ups of my third and final layout with the ScrapThat! November Kit "Remember When . . ." I absolutely love the Prima Wood Doors that came with the Embellishment Add-On - but they kind of stumped me at first. So I decided to use them as - doors! - that open and reveal a picture of the cutest baby ever (not that I am biased at all).  Playing on the "doors" theme, I called the layout "You Hold the Key to My Heart" (so true - my son is the love of my life!). Here are the two views of the layout (i.e. doors closed and doors open).

I used three different papers (though only bits of two) for this layout and embellishments from the Main Kit, Flower Add-on and Embellishment Add-on. The doors/bricks are the focal point of the layout (obviously) - but it took a lot of steps to get to what you see on the finished page, so bear with me if you want the full details!

Here are the steps I took to create the brickwork around the doors:

1. Trace the Prima Wooden Doors onto a piece of scrap paper and cut out the shape - this will form a "mask" so that you can leave a void for the placement of the doors inside the brickwork.

2. Decide where on your page you want the doors. You'll need to plan your page in advance - I chose to put my focus in the lower right since the Bo Bunny Serenade paper had such a pretty design in the upper left anyway.  Attach the scrap-paper door shape to the layout with removable adhesive. 

3. Choose your mask - I picked bricks to make it look like the doors were opening out of a brick wall - but any mask you like will work. 

4. Place your mask and start filling it in with light molding paste (I used Golden brand). Don't be too perfect in this step - I did not want a perfect square of bricks and intentionally went with the offset, diagonal brickwork. Allow molding paste to dry.

5. Reset your mask and paint over the masked design - I chose black paint. It doesn't haven't to be perfectly painted - the next step will take care of any white that shows through. Allow paint to dry.

6. Reset your mask (again) and brush perfect pearls powder over the masked design - I used two colours, red and pewter. This will cover any white space left in painting and give the masked design a nice, multi-toned appearance (unfortunately, the full-effect of the perfect pearls doesn't come across in photos).

7. Remove the scrap paper door template and you now have a masked area with a void for the doors.

To attach the doors, I cut a piece of black cardstock to the same size/shape as the doors and used ribbon from the main kit to create "hinges" - gluing the ribbon to the back of the cardstock and back of the wooden doors. I then covered the back of the doors with some of the red/black patterned paper in the kit - not only does this look great, it hid the ribbon that I used to hinge the doors! Finally, I Photo-shopped my favourite baby picture of my son to include the title and printed it and trimmed it to fit behind the doors.

The last step for this layout was the embellishing! I used the tulle flowers from the Flower Add-on, keys and beaded leaves from the Embellishment Add-on and black tulle and white paper flowers from the Main Kit to create my floral clusters at the bottom left and top right corners of the doors. I also added in some fussy-cut dragonflies from another sheet of patterned paper.

That's it for my first month with the ScrapThat! Design Team. I hope you found a little inspiration from my layouts! Thanks so much for your visit to my blog today! I appreciate your visits and comments so much!