No such thing as Trash

Today I made my first ever Gothic Arch…and let me say that I am now addicted. Not that I am not addicted to almost all the challenges but this particular one just seems to really grip me.

Today the challenge was to…

Our hostess this week is Klaartje who has a very creative challenge for all of you. She created this precious arch using “trash” - items you would normally throw away….think package labels, bubble wrap, a lid of a tincan and…..?

Well, there was absolutely no way I was rummaging through my trash can since the top item was a discarded banana peal…YUCK!! But lou and behold, my DH had not cleaned up his tea bag from the night before. As many of you know Tea is one of my favorite things, to drink and to use in my pieces. So that little tea bag and the wrapper came with me to the stamping room.

I don’t throw brown paper grocery bags away so I am not sure my background counts as trash. But it is a brown paper bag crumpled and then aged using Tim Holtz distressing ink. I then over stamped the definition of tea from Stampington & co. repeatedly and using colored pencils highlighted the tea leaves.

The image of the woman sitting with her tea is from an old magazine. I cut her out and placed her so. Next I disassembled the tea bag, saving the tea leaves and gold embossed two tea cup on the actual tea bag. After threading the tea bags string through the left hand side of the arch I glued the tea cups on. Last I glued on the Tea’s label at the top of the arch. To finish it all off I edged the arch with the tea leaves.

I think I did a pretty good job for my first arch! Any and all comments, critical or just plain love it are welcome.

Enjoy!
Caro