Project Alert: The Writing [on the Stamp] is on the Wall

Sometimes genius comes slowly. Sometimes it comes all at once, in a fit of brilliance. But for me, most of the time, it comes from Pinterest. 

Two Saturdays ago, I was planted on my couch, mindlessly perusing my own pins, when I stumbled upon an idea I'd pinned some time back to my "Wanderlust and Second Helpings" board. It was a collection of stamps that had been mounted, framed, and displayed on a wall as art. Some had been enlarged, giving the collection an interesting, varied look.

And then I had one of those face-palm, coulda-had-a-V8 sort of moments.

A few years ago, on an ordinary Saturday visit to her house, my grandmother (on my dad's side) gave me an unassuming yellow box. Time had dulled its color a bit, and upon further inspection I noticed that, in tiny powder blue script, it was labeled "Estee Lauder." I cracked open the box and was surprised to find not makeup, but something infinitely more interesting.

Inside was a collection of some of the most interesting stamps I'd ever seen. They were time-worn tokens of adventures, relics from countries all over the world, even some that don't even exist anymore. They told stories of exotic, far away places--Germany, Belgium, Vietnam, Japan, Nepal, Hungary. It was history, tucked away for years in a faded yellow box.

And to think that, up until two Saturdays ago, those stamps had sat in that Estee Lauder box on a shelf in our spare bedroom, gathering dust.

Now, a share of them hang on my living room wall, a reminder of family and a daily chance to imagine what adventures these stamps saw before they came to find themselves in my little yellow box.

And all it took was a moment of genius, some pre-cut mat board and stamp mounts from Hobby Lobby, a few cheap frames from Wal-Mart, a digital camera, and a few hours of creativity. Interested in showing off your very own stamp collection? Great! Come along, fellow stamp nerd!

Displaying Your Stamp Collection 101

 

Time to Complete: 

An afternoon

What you'll need:

• However many stamps you want to display
• Stamp mounts (see note below)
• Pre-cut mat board in whatever size and color you'd like--pick colors that complement your decor, but that won't overwhelm your stamps. They're the real stars here, after all!
• Heavy card stock paper (again, in a complementary--but not overwhelming--color)
• Picture frames in a variety of sizes (I used 5x7, 8x10, and 11x14)
• A digital camera
• A computer

 

What you'll do:

• Pick out the stamps you want to display.
• Pick out a few that are really special to you or are visually striking. These will be the ones you'll digitally enlarge for your display.
• Place the stamps you want to digitally enlarge on white paper background and photograph in good lighting from directly above. Then, upload the photos to your computer and use a photo editing program (like Photoshop, or a free online tool--my favorites are Canva and PicMonkey) to tweak the photo to your liking.
• Size those photos however you like--I did one 8x10 and two 4x6s--upload them to walmart.com or another photo service, and order them for just a couple bucks. You can pick them up at your nearest Wal-Mart's 1-hour photo service desk (ah, hell, who am I kidding. It's Wal-Mart. Better give your order half a day.)
• Select the stamps you're going to group together in a display (the ones you're not going to enlarge) and arrange them on a sheet of card stock--do this for each grouping you want displayed. You can get fancy with the groupings--I just did grids, but you could do whatever you want! Then place the stamps in the stamp mounts and put them back in place on the card stock. If you like, you can trim your mounts if you have smaller stamps so that the black mount isn't so obvious. Stamp mounts are a great tool for nerds like me who love stamps and don't want to see them destroyed in the display process. There are things out there called stamp hinges. I do NOT recommend using those, because they require you to adhere the hinge directly to the stamp, so you could end up damaging your beloved stamp. Not cool, stamp hinge. Not cool. Here's a great video about how to use stamp mounts at the bottom of this post--definitely check it out. You might fall asleep while watching it, but even though the guy is super boring, he sure is helpful.

• Once your stamps are in the mounts, adhere the mounts to the card stock by touching a damp finger to the adhesive side of the mount and pressing the mount firmly down on the card stock.
• Center the card stock in your mat and tape to the back of the mat to secure. Then frame, hang, and congratulate yourself on a job well done! 

Here are some more stamps from the collection now on my wall. I wanted to do a frame for each country, but Matt (the rational one in this family) said that having a frame for each of the dozens of countries in that little yellow box would be bordering on insanity.

Ugh. Husbands ruin all the fun. :)

 

Until next time, adventurers!

Betsey