Vintage Letterpress Tray...and more!

It's been a few weeks since I have been out garage sale-ing but Char and I were back in action this weekend. We headed out early Saturday Morning and hit a community sale. At our very first stop I found this vintage letterpress tray. A few months ago I wouldn't have even know what this was, but after I saw how my friend Carly is using hers I have been wanting one. These can sell upwards of $100 on Etsy so I was really pleased to find one at a garage sale for $5!

I would rate the condition as fair and very, very dirty. I spent close to 4 hours cleaning it but could probably work on it for days. My husband (who is not the world's most patient man) suggested I use his power washer on it. Ha! My efforts did improve it slightly as you can see by the photo below (taken after the first third had been cleaned).

The tray has paper backing which was impossible difficult to clean. In an effort to protect my stamps I decided to insert card stock over the paper backing and behind each of the stamps. I'll stamp the image first and it will also serve to remind me where the stamp belongs. A glue dot was used to keep the card stock in place.

And here it is in a corner of my craft room. As you can see, I don't have many wood mounted stamps but now that I have a place to to put them I am thinking there may be more in my future ;). There are lots of small openings which work great for my ink cubes. Now that I have the tray up I've decided to keep my notice boards in my craft room and will be hanging them shortly beside the tray.

Other great finds of the day were two lamp shades in perfect condition for $1 each.

I thought I might cover them but they actually work well in our family room as is.

I almost passed on these charger plates. At $10 they seemed expensive until I realized there were 12 of them, and many still had original price tags of $4 each on the bottom. They will be nice with our Christmas table setting which is orange, cream, and gold.

The other items are a new black Ikea floating shelf which retails for $20 and was bought for $5, a wire fruit bowl bought for $2, two books that were 50 cent each, and a new set of rubber alpha stamps that I picked up for $2.

So there's my haul for the day. Not bad for $27, hey? Not to mention I had a great day with a super friend.

I'll be linking this up to Southern Hospitality.