I’ve got a new baby, and a lot of my making has been babycentric. Here’s a look at one creation.
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The inspiration: Golden stamp books of “Mammals of North America” and “Cats.”
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Last summer, I found a pair of Golden stamp books at a rummage sale. Do you remember these activity books? They came with stamps that readers matched to articles. Educational stickers β€” love it!
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I liked the books’ illustrations, and I love vintage paper stuff (as evidenced by this tree poster I showed off in this post). I envisioned the animal stamps as pieces of accent art. They joined my collection of other old-timey animal decorations that eventually would be used in Paul‘s nursery.
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I chose my favorite animal stamps for the collage and avoided the more graphic images of predators and prey that, while a fact of nature, might have been slightly too disturbing for a baby’s room.

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The stamps are displayed in a collage frame. Rather than buying wrapping paper or scrapbooking paper or using construction paper from my cache of crafting supplies, I ransacked my fabric stash for interesting patterned material on which to mount the stamps.

The stamps are mounted with double-sided tape squares on fabric.

I adhered the stamps with one of my favorite crafting tools: 3M’s photo mounting squares. I love these double-sided lovelies because it’s much, much faster to peel a tiny, sticky square than it is to make a tape loop. So convenient!

The finished collage hangs in Paul’s room.
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The only thing I’m not thrilled about is the color of the collage frame: black. It’s a bit too severe for the room, stamps, and fabric, but it’s going to stay that way for a while. With a new baby, painting a perfectly fine frame is a low priority. Besides, I don’t know what color I’d paint it. Any thoughts? I’m leaning toward white or ivory. The room is light blue with primary color accents and a lot of green.
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A closeup of some of the stamps. The trash-loving skunk reminds me a bit of our hobo cat, Gato, who also is black and white.
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Do you like collage frames? Find them too busy? I think it takes a good balance of images to make one successful. And why are so many of them black?