Vintage Stamps

I did these birds using regular paper but the background is vintage postage stamps. Ive collected them for years from all over the place like flea markets, antique stores and garage sales. I have used them in some other collage artwork but never this many at a time. I think they were happy to be out of the box!

Vintage Postage Stamps

I love vintage postage stamps. They are just cool to me and I enjoy using them in my artwork. It took awhile but I went through my huge bucket of postage stamps and pulled out all the airmail stamps in red and green. I wanted another color so I went and found all of my orange six cent stamps. All the cancellation marks and date stamps are original on the stamps themselves. Because of this I decided not to paint or change the stamps in any way and just use them as my background. I'm glad I did because I think they are unique on their own. 

Here is what I came up with...

 mixed media, paper, acrylic

 mixed media, paper, acrylic

 

 mixed media, paper, acrylic

It kinda makes my head spin when I look at all these individual stamps. Do you think some of them were used for love letters? A note to Mom or Dad? Maybe secret documents? I'm sure each could tell a great story...I hope I did them justice.