Those QRPme pads are a little expensive. Even at G-QRP club prices. Manhattan construction really does work well though.
I've done a fair bit of "stingy" manhattan construction because I don't want to pay for QRPme pads. Rapid Electronics sell 100x160 (and larger) FR4 boards for not much money (or you can pay through the nose for CIF ones on RS). If you score both sides with a stanley knife then break a 5mm strip off with some pliers then use some tin snips/aviation shears to cut lengths off as you need it and stick 'em down. To do DIP packages you can use a square cut off with some traces hacksawed out and solder the IC or a DIP socket to it:
The above was receiving a £8 log amp IC so I wanted to be nice to it
