New Home Decor & My Favorite Rubber

Hello and welcome to my new followers I'm so thrilled to know who I am writing to. 

So much going on here. I have a lot of projects in the works or newly finished that there is not enough room to set up a decent photo session. I have to clean the work table to set it up and well if you've seen my What's On Your Work desk Wednesday posts you know that the mess is growing. So I will show you some older projects and share one little bit of newness.

Today's shared projects are both home decor items. No cards or scrapbook pages today. The first was made for one of my besties (that sounds so weird coming from a 45 y.o. woman). She saw a little sign I made for my kitchen out of some mat board scraps and asked me to make her one too.

"What do you want it to say?" I asked.

"Carpe Diem" she replied and I put it in my head and let it stew as I do with a lot of projects. 

When I saw these chipboard teapots at Micheal's I knew this was the canvas for this project. I used some retired SU paper that you can't really see for all the Distress ink on it. I used 2 pieces of chipboard. I decorated them both then glued them together with the wire and bead steam coming out of the spout and the hanging ribbon securely glued between the chip boards.

One side says Carpe Diem Seize the Day

the other says Carpe Tea(cup) mmmmm Ease the Day

If I had spelled it out it would have said "team" and that's just wrong. Which team would she be seizing or easing? hmmm

The next project was a result of "what the heck am I going to do with this Grungeboard skull?". I was playing with paint and pearlex on the scull and glue and Pearlex on the crown. I decided I should put them together on a canvas board. I used craft acrylic paints for the background. I never thought it would end up the way it did, but I like it. That happens to me often, I start out with a thought for a project and the project ends up taking over and it becomes better than what I had originally intended.

I used a Tim Holtz compass mask and Distress inks in the upper left corner, which you can't see well in this picture,  because my son thought the text should say something about treasure and pirates looking for treasure use compasses. I came up with "You are my greatest treasure," which he really liked. I used Elmer's paint pens in white to add the text. Then I used a black paint pen to do some shadowing on the scull and letters. My boy wants to hang it up in his room and as soon as I put a final coat of Mod Podge on it and get it in a frame I'm going to let him.

From the Newness Department

I received a lot of wonderful packages in the last week. There were 3 on Thursday, I received the Fancy Pants Valentine Cards from the Happy Little Studio blog, Jen Wilson's State of the Heart collection from the My Mind's Eye blog and a box of test tubes etc from American Science and Surplus for my son's up coming Mad Scientist Birthday Party. While I am really happy to have all of this newness in the house I am most excited about this.

This is my logo. In a stamp. That I designed. 

I read about RubberStamps.net on the Chica & Jo website, looked at the price, decided it was not too much for a small high quality rubber stamp (Chica and Jo had already given the quality a thumbs up) and proceeded. I was going to attempt to carve the logo out of an erasure or fun foam and nixed the idea because I wanted the lines to be clean and my carving isn't that good.

It arrived quickly. Within days to be exact and the quality is wonderful. I love that the logo is not just in rubber but in wood as well. That is not a sticker on the front, it is the image burned into the wooden block and I LOVE the smell of burned wood, so campfirey.  Now the back of my cards can have my logo as well as my name. Yee Hee.

Happy Crafting,
Katie

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