Procrastination stamping.

   The Tin Man has just about finished renovating the backhall/laundry room, so today we started getting things back into place. Of course we needed to do a little purging and decide what needs to go back into that room or somewhere else. And now that everything is all nice and freshly painted with new flooring I want the little things to look nice too. So as I so often do at this stage, I decided a little crafting make over was in order. I thought of replacing these boxes because they're really just glorified cardboard boxes, but they still do the job and fit well on the shelf. They're just for storage of items we don't need year round.

   Unfortunately I don't have a before photo but you can image what they looked like, just plain cardboard on the sides with some, kinda interesting rope handles on the ends. When they're on the shelf you just see the side, so that's where I did the make over. I used a hand carves stamp that I made after taking Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Stamp Carving 101 last year. I was originally going to put paper all over the boxes but when I mentioned this to the Tin Man he thought I should paint them. As soon as he said it this stamp popped in my head and I knew that's what I wanted to do. I love it when an idea is that easy. At first I tried to use permanent ink but it didn't give me a very good image because of the softness of the box, so I switched to black acrylic paint which I applied to the stamp a little on the thick side with a sponge brush. The image is still a little hit and miss but I'm happy with it. I then used chalk board paint on the lid edge so we can label them and change it if need be. 
   This is one of the fastest and easiest make overs I've done. Now they're ready to put on the shelf. I guess I should get back at cleaning up!

If you're interested in learning to carve your own stamp check out Julie's course.
Or if you live in the Ottawa area, you can go to the Laura Daub Studio where she teaches stamp carving also.

Happy Creating!

Wendy