Steps to deadbug an SMD chip

Step 1: Prep the Wire.

Get the thinnest wire you can find and stretch it on a Helping Hand tool.
Tin that as best you can.

Step 2: Position the Chip

Okay, as you can see, I am past the first set of legs here. What I have done is line up the wire as horizontal as I could, then with another helping hand and a tweezer, I raised the chip up to the already tinned wire (parallel to it) until it is putting a BIT of pressure upwards (like a guitar bridge).

At that point, you slightly wet your soldering iron and touch the wire right about where the chip lead is.

Clip the wire inside of the leads.

Do the same on the other pairs of wires.

Step 3: Take a Break

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Phew! Almost there...

Step 4: Mount the Chip

This step is pretty much the same as before. give a slight tug on each wire to touch it to the legs of your header for tension (metal's nature will keep it in position). since they are already tinned from before, just touch them with the soldering iron to the corresponding header lead.

Step 5: Ready to Rock!

There are plenty of 'ibles and youtube videos and blogs on how to program an ATTiny, so I'll leave that step to you.

I'm working out a way to make this foolproof so that you don't have to bend the wire leads into position on the headers. That will be my next Instructable. HINT: think of a spider web, because my next one will be a full ATMEGA328.

In the meantime, here's a video of the deadbug ATTINY85 loaded with a standard blink sketch.

http://youtu.be/ldmjpZiaRB8

Step 6: Update: 2 Sep 2014

Oh DARN it! Someone (Raul on G+) beat me to it! I just found this article on hackaday:

http://hackaday.com/2013/06/25/solder-trick-to-make-your-own-surface-mount-breakout-boards/