In the process of cleaning up my art journaling supplies recently, I came across a giant pile of postage stamps that I had acquired through various art journaling workshops and hand-me-downs supplies from my mom. I knew I had the stamps, I've even used them before in my journal pages, but I had always just grabbed them willy-nilly out of my paper scrap box and pasted them down without a second glance. I assumed they were just your average boring postage stamps. When I happened to take a closer look at them a few days ago, I realized that I've got quite the worldly collection! There are stamps from India, Spain, Romania, Dubai, Hong Kong... you name it. And many are dated from the 1950's and 1960's.
I found the color of the stamps extremely striking, and the OCD-side of me just had to separate them out by color and snap some pictures before they are destined for my next art project. Each stamp is so intricate, and it's amazing to think about the design work and attention to detail that went into something as teeny and mundane as a postage stamp. It's kind of fascinating! Especially when you think about how we have technology today to scale and reproduce stamps with the push of a button, but how did they do it in the olden days? Hire mice with miniature paintbrushes? That's the story I'm going to go with :)
Oh how awesome! I love the purple and red collection. I haven't seen the book yet, but you might enjoy Lisa Congdon's "Collection a Day". It is fascinating to see how a simple and mundane object becomes interesting in a grouping.
ReplyDeleteWow, you have some great stamps! Where did you get them?
ReplyDelete@Stephanie ~ I've seen some of Lisa's collections and I've heard about "Collection a Day" but still need to check it out. Very cool concept!
ReplyDelete@Elle ~ I meant to say in the post where I got them (... updating now!). I got some of them as materials for art journaling classes and the rest my mom gave me as a hand-me-down from her own collage-paper stash.
They are incredible Caiti, and I love that you sorted them by color, a girl after my own heart! Do you have a plan to incorporate them all together in one piece of art journaling? Or at least a good portion?
ReplyDelete@Ashley ~ I really want to try a DIY project with them similar to this: http://pinterest.com/pin/131379706/
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'll blog about it since it's based off of an artist's piece on Etsy, and I'm pretty opposed to sharing DIYs based off of original artwork. But, I do want to play around with the concept since I have so many stamps to use! They usually just end up pasted somewhere in the background of one of my journal pages.