Crafty Individuals Wooden Tray

I got this wooden tray with little compartments when I bought a set of felt alphabets in my favourite art and craft shop in France the other week. The challenge was that there were so many compartments in it that if I filled each one with a detailed image it would look very busy. This is particularly taxing for me as a 'more is more' girl but I am trying hard at the moment! Now that I have finished the project it looks really simple but I struggled with it and tried the pieces lots of different ways before I stuck them down.

I painted the box with pale yellow paint and then cut some squares from two pieces of the masterboards I made recently, one more predominantly pink, and one more yellows and blues. I had intended that the empty compartments would be the plain yellow paint ones, with the stampbord tiles sitting centrally on the masterboard backgrounds. I really liked the backgrounds, though, as I have this thing about inky sheets that look dribbly, if you know what I mean, so I didn't want to cover them up. I also preferred the assymetry of having the tiles positioned differently in each section. I wanted to have a few tiles that were abstract rather than focal images so that there wasn't too much detail fighting together.

I coloured the stampbord with Distress Inks and then pressed them into the sections of the Crafty Individuals' stamps that I wanted. Having stuck everything down, I then added copper hardware at the opposing corners.

I don't know about you but I find composition the hardest thing with my stamped work. I know when I am not happy with how it looks, and I know when I am happy, but don't always know what I need to do to get from A to B. So it was like a chess game last night, repositioning all the pieces and then going away and coming back to it later. And now it looks such a simple piece of work .......!