Tuesday, July 17, 2007

All about Stamps – but not those ones!!

Now when we scrapbookers say “stamps” – we usually think of ones which need inks to make an impression of an image on paper… right? Right… well it’s not those I’m going to talk about today!!

And I suppose the photograph probably gave it away didn’t it?!

Anyway, I really like postage stamps (for scrapbooking you understand, I don’t collect them or anything like that!!). I have found small packets of collections of stamps in a couple of local charity shops.

One packet held about 60-70 postage stamps and cost all of 50p and a more recent purchase was a whole £1, held about 45-50 stamps – these were themed, specifically “flowers”. They are the ones pictured.

Now amazingly enough… my husband’s experience as a stamp collector when he was a boy, came in handy. That’s because the second packet of stamps were still attached to their backing, ie they had been cut out from their envelopes.

My husband knew that to get the stamps off the envelope backing I needed to place them into a bowl of hot water (hand hot, don’t start boiling the kettle!! LOL!) and they would peel off!

Hey… what satisfying fun! I did just that and put them in the hot water, waited for a while (only a few minutes) and then was able to easily peel the stamps from their moorings. Some of them fell away by themselves.

They were then laid on some kitchen roll on a tray to dry.

Of course as they dried they curled a little bit, but then Honey and I laid them out on a sheet of A4 paper, put another piece on top and then, after placing them between two scrapbooking magazines, I tucked them underneath a big pile of Honey’s books!

I did this on Sunday… frankly I have to admit to forgetting about them till about half an hour ago when I was hunting the stack of books for a story!... but now I have lovely flat colourful flowery stamps to use. Trouble is they are so nice I may use them all on a layout just to show them off!!

Does that defeat the object do you think?!

1 comment:

katy said...

oh what beautiful stamps they are, cant wait to see how you use them on a lo :)