Stamp Collage

Stamps can be very addictive. Little capsules of history, geography, and art, they suck you into their world. Once you enter, your chances of escape from their gravity are slim. I got hooked over 30 years ago, and they still intrigue me as intensely as they did the day I first walked into the old Corn Exchange stamp shop in Bristol. I collected seriously for years but kicked the habit when I started inventing my own countries and designing their stamps! 

Most cities have a stamp store, and they will be more than willing to sell you a bag of cheap stamps for collaging. Alternatively, have a poke around on eBay, and you’ll be able to find some for very little there. The vast majority of stamps are worth less than a cent apiece, so picking up a boxful of them for collaging is going to cost you little more than pocket change.

While you probably wouldn’t want to attempt a large collage using only stamps, for small or miniature collages they are perfect. Packed with color and content and on a suitable weight of paper, you can cut and paste them with abandon.

Materials: scrap of white paper, pencil, old stamps, and glue stick

Time: 20 minutes

Size: 3”×1.5”

INSTRUCTIONS

Draw a 3”×1.5” rectangle on the paper. Using stamps as your collage material, construct a landscape in your rectangle. For this exercise, the stamps must be torn. No cutting, except for creating straight edges to use against the sides of your frame line. When tearing paper, have the piece you want to use in your dominant hand and rip toward you– that way you’ll avoid an unwanted white edge.

Also, don’t use any figurative elements from the stamps–a tree shouldn’t be used as a tree.

HINT

Get rid of the perforations and white border from around the stamps or they’ll make your collage look like crazy paving. Treat the little torn sections of stamp as if they are part of a mosaic, building your landscape piece by piece.