Boos & Brews Collection: Spooky Layout by Melinda

Hello everyone, it's Melinda with you today and for the first time ever... and I really mean ever, I get to do a Halloween layout using an actual Halloween photo. You see, living on a farm in Australia which doesn't officially celebrate the Halloween holiday, we don't do anything for Oct 31. That was until my teenager and her friends decided they would dress up and have a bit of fun, much to my delight.

I was super excited to get my hands on the Boos & Brews collection this year as I had something to scrap. Albeit, a skeleton face, but hey, who's complaining. I chose to do the photo in black and white so it really stood out from the traditional colours of the collection.

I was Very relieved to have found some white letters in my Doodlebug rub-on collection. I don't know where I would be without them for journaling, especially on black. I also decided that I couldn't go past doing a small amount of collage work on the layout so chose to map out the letters of the word 'eek'. Which fitted perfectly with the picture of my daughter's face.

Just look at the cute little Doodle-Pop spider. There are actually four little Doodle-Pops in this one packet including two wee spiders and the little froggy I used inside the word 'eek' and a fun little bat. I didn't have room for him this time but he will be on a card very soon.

And if you are wondering which paper I have used, it's from the brand new Petite Prints collection and this side is called 'Linen' which is my absolute new favourite.

I just love the new paint splat shapes in this collection so had to use as many as I could fit within the lettering.

So that's it for our Boos & Brews inspiration. We hope you have enjoyed all the wonderful projects from the design team and look forward to spying your work around social media in the near future. Halloween is not that far away so good luck working on those costumes!

Sweet Things Collection: Love You Layout by Melinda

Can you believe it's February already and Valentine's Day is just around the corner? It's Melinda with you today and although I'm not really into celebrating the day of love on Feb 14, I do still love to use a collection that boasts lots of hearts and flowers.

And to make the 'Sweet Things' collection even sweeter, Cynthea has added mint green to the already gorgeous colour combination. I can never pass up an opportunity to use the colour mint.

To put my layout together I marked out a heart shape onto the background and added journaling using Doodlebug sentiment rub-ons. I then filled in the gaps with hand stitching over little clusters of embellishments.

TIP: Whenever I hand sew into sticky-back embellishments I dip my needle into baby powder every few stitches so it doesn't get all gooey from the adhesive.

The main cluster of flowers underneath the photos are made from the pre-cut 'Valentine Flowers' craft kit which contains over 35 reversible mix & match floral pieces. So you can flip them over to find the best combination for your project.

So, how is everyone going with their Valentine's plans? I have to finish a sneaky card for The Farmer and then I'm done. Thanks for stopping by - Melinda

Polar Pals Collection: Winter Layout by Melinda Spinks

Hello to everyone, it's Melinda here today and I know you are going to say "didn't you retire from scrapbooking"? Well to answer that question, yes, I did! However, I never realised how much I would miss the creativity and also the beautiful people at Doodlebug. So with a great deal of shuffling, contemplating, re-organising and pre-planning... I'm back!

Now, you wouldn't believe that I'm sitting here at my desk with an ice cold drink of water, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and contemplating flicking the air conditioner switch as it's getting unbearably hot. All this while trying to conjure up the words for my 'Winter' themed post. That's the joy of living South of the Equator with opposite climates to the current scrapbooking trend.

Fortunately I had family who managed to visit the snow this past winter so I asked if I could scrap their gorgeous photo. And, I'm very happy they wore colour co-ordinating outfits to the Polar Pals collection... it's always a bonus!

In the past when I have created a collage on a layout I would adhere everything directly onto the background cardstock. But this time I was aiming for a slightly different look to my collage... more of a donut, than a circle. I started by cutting a 9.5" circle from white card.

Then I cut a 4" whole in the middle of the larger circle to create my donut.

As with any collage, I always place the largest pieces on first for a balanced look. However, this time I allowed the pieces to overhang the edges as I wanted to trim the excess away which would give the more defined look that I was aiming for.

And finally, I filled in all the gaps with Glitter Sprinkles, Polar Pals Icon Stickers, Winter Snowflake Sprinkles, and Doodle Pops.

Thank you for stopping by today. It's nice to be back! Melinda