Re-Purposing of a Tea Crate

My MIL got me this cool glass tea pot with flowering teas for christmas but I must say when I first unwrapped the gift my first thought was what a cool storage crate this will make on my new desk! I love flowering teas so this was an all around perfect gift and the fact that I got a cool new container, shredded fluff and pretty cardboard was like 5 gifts in one :D....yes I was excited when I found well formed corrugated cardboard under all of that fluff, I'm easy to please.

So here is what I did:

Take one tea crate and carefully un-stick the paper logo stuff. This had glue dots on it that hung on for dear life!

One the bog was free of the paper I was left with shredded fluff, I stuffed this into a ziplock for later use. I never imagined when I started this craft that it was as "eco-friendly" as it is. I re-purpose stuff like crazy now!

Next I started to stamp. I used wood blocks and clear stamps on this box. I really didn't have much of a theme I just started going for it, figuring it would probably turn out perfect in the end. I did discover that using Early Espresso wasn't dark enough to really show up and that I actually had a use for black ink after all.

Since I had already stamped lots of things onto the box in Early Espresso I just went and stamped over some with the Basic Black and with others I off set the stamp to create a layering affect on it the image. I like the was it turned out with the 2 colors, gave it a old burned wood kinda feel to it.

I added a little bling to it to make the flowers pop a bit more, I like it so far but I think the box as a whole needs something else so for now its just a work in progress until I figure out what that thing is. 

Here is where I will store my ink overflow and clear stamp overflow for the time being.

What I used on this project:

• 1 Numi flowering tea create
• Early Espresso and Basic Black (SU!)
• Stamps: French Foliage (SU!),  Cantaria (Prima), Vintage Stamps in Liberty and Paris (Hero Arts), and some various other stamps that I do not know the names to.

Thanks for looking,