Stamp Holiday Cards

Each spring and fall, the local historical society and quilting group holds a one day rummage sale fundraiser inside an old one-room school house that's been moved to a historical museum site in town.  After noon, every thing goes for $1 a bag.  When we wandered by in the afternoon this fall, the only things I found were four much needed "vintage" North Face camping pads which they sold to me for $1 a piece since they wouldn't fit into a bag, and a big bag of old stamps, also only for a $1. 

The stamps here are just a small, small bit of them.  They'd been given to the historical society sometime when the school stamp collecting club went extinct, which appears to be, by the newest of the stamps, sometime in the 1970's.  They'd tried to sell them by the small baggie in the museum itself but hadn't had much success with that over the years, so they finally just dumped them in one big bag in the rummage sale. 

I recruited E to help me sort a baggie of them by color, but neither of the boys were all that interested in making the cards themselves, only making one or two each.  For me, however, these were quite fun to put together.  Some of them were personalized for the recipient based on the locations of the postmarks on the stamps, some even have subtle political messages but which will probably be lost to the recipient anyways, and many were assembled purely with shading of colors or direction and shape of postmark lines in mind.  Towards the end I, too, grew a little irritable at sticking on stamp after stamp of "a bunch of guys".  Fortunately, there were some nice brown 1.5 cent Martha Washington stamps to use for some of the tree trunks. a nice, strong foundation for all those old geezers.   

I'm really not at all into stamp collecting in the traditional sense, although I do save stamps off of letters we receive.  I've also recently inherited a big box of stamps my grandmother collected over time, as well as a fair number of Norwegian stamps from my mother.  If nothing else, they're quite fun just to sort and look through, a few at a time, either myself or with the boys, or to use for crafting projects.  Each one is a miniature piece of artwork, with such detail and either subtlety or boldness of color, telling a little about the time in history or the place in which it was released and printed.   

Comments

[da twine / michelle]

oh how i adore your stamped cards! thanks for sharing the story of how you came across and created those little works of art. reminds me of helping my grandpa lift stamps from envelopes, dry them, and assemble them into his collection books. i don't think i'd ever be allowed to use his in the way you're using these, but that's not to say one's right and one's wrong. i've got to find me some sales like the ones you've discovered!
mele kalikimaka,
michelle
http://www.melekalikimaka.com/meleka.wav

[Ella]

That is awesome! What a great project with so much more going on than first meets the eye.

[Dawn]

That is truly a stamped card! how wonderful to get one in the mail. Great idea.

[Caroline]

Very good idea ! I 'll tray.

[Peg]

What a wonderful use of the old stamps! As you say, some stamps are truly a work of art in themselves!

[Elizabeth]

What a brilliant use for old stamps, and how nice to hear the story behind how they came to you.

[Beth]

What a great idea / great project! I love the stories of old stamps.

[Kate]

Awesome. This might be my favorite thing you've done and shared on the blog. Just a great idea for using found objects! Thanks!

[t]

I like reading about your own thoughts and feelings as the project progressed, particularly about the "bunch of guys" who later became the old geezers! Lovely cards.

[Georgia]

I feel the exact same way about stamps that they are "miniture pieces of art" and I collect them for that reason too...not all of them, but the nice ones. I love to rummage through them, and I love to stack them all on a piece of paper and scan them and use that "paper" for different things. What a bargain. I would have been so excited to get that bag for $1!!!!

[Amber]

What a cute idea! I recently found my old stamp collection album from my childhood. My kids looked at it and basically said, "eh." I don't think they quite "got" the stamp collecting idea...

[Tola]

ive collected stamps for a long time, and this craft idea is wonderful! may i please have your permission to print the photos so that i can keep them in my idea book?

[madelinetosh]

such, such, such a great idea!

yes, there is definitely a darth of female heads on all of the stamps available today. maybe hilary will change that? hmmmm.