Scrap Girls LOVE! at home retreat Challenge 2

This weekend I am participating in an "at-home" retreat on their Facebook page.  They have several challenges that you can complete and some Bingo games.   Here is my layout for the Challenge 2.

The photographs were taken at a restaurant/beer hall in The Vienna Woods - I naively thought we were headed to a forest!!!  Am sure there were woods somewhere close but we did not see them, it was night as we headed out of Vienna into what seemed just like an outer suburb. 
There was this accordion player who played for our group - all night - he was a character.  I loved his playing and got into the spirit of the evening - singing along and providing some antics - I am not sure what song he was playing but it had a great beat and just called for some fun times.
My title - I do not drink alcohol what you see is a glass of Diet Coke.  As my sister, says "it is only Diet Coke - image if she did drink alcohol!!"

Back to the layout - we were required to do a layout that:

• was about you and contained a photo of you - okay, so I used several photos. 
• used patterned paper (PP)
• had buttons and ribbons - I used a very fine metallic gold thread from my machine embroidery days
• ink or paint - I first diluted some white acrylic paint with Jo Sonja Flow Medium and painted onto the PP to reduce the intensity of it.  I let this dry and then using circle stencil once again pounced the white paint onto the PP in places and also around the edges of the PP.  When all dry I used some Distress Stain in spots.  Hopefully the little snippet above shows these techniques.

Some additional techniques I used - I have used sandpaper to sand the edges of my photos, now this was something new to me and added to the fun-ness. To continue the fun and slightly wacky photos I used odd alphas for my titles.

I am also going to add this to a challenge at ARTastic Challenges this month. Their criteria was to use paint on your layout. 

I had fun, and I hope you have enjoyed being in the Vienna Woods with me.   Margaret :)