Making Spirits Bright | Merry & Bright | Melissa Vining

Hello! Its Melissa here and I’m so excited to be sharing my first layout made with the brand new ‘MERRY & BRIGHT’ collection!! This collection is totally stunning and I was so happy to start using it.  I decided to scrap an older photo of my daughter Brielle from a couple of years ago with a Christmas cookie at one of our favourite cafes.  My challenge was to use black, and I chose to use black acrylic paint and black mist spatters.

I decided to go bold with this page, and used the ‘SEASON’S GREETING’ patterned paper as my background.  I painted on some black paint with a foam brush to create visual separation, and its only because of the paint that this page doesn’t appear too busy.  I added large white spatters on top of the back paint once it was dry.

I backed my photo with several papers from the ‘A5 PAPER STACK’, and I love that they are such a thick weight and can handle lots of distressing!  I cut a larger piece of the scripted font paper and tore the bottom edge for extra texture.

I fussy cut one of the floral clusters from ‘JOY TO THE WORLD’ for my main embellishment cluster.  I cut the pieces apart fully, and then placed them back together in a configuration I liked on top of my photo.  My journalling and title are utilising two of the ‘POCKET CARDS’. I had to use one of the cute houses from the ‘DIE CUT EPHEMERA’ pack too!

Of course I had to add one of the gorgeous gold ‘PUFFY STARS’!! I added some other ephemera pieces too.  My final touch was to add large black and gold splatters!

I’m so grateful for this challenge, as I don’t know if I would have thought to add black paint onto my layout! I also don’t think I would have used this patterned paper as a background.

You can watch my layout come together in my process video.

Have an awesome Black Friday weekend!

Melissa xx