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Postage Stamp Paper

Stamps are a recurring theme with me. I love getting them and thanks to the fact that I live away from home I get a fair number of them. My mother also gives me stamps from work occasionally. But my love of the tiny works of art began when my grandmother started me off on a collection. She has been collecting for eons and has books full of them. None of them are particularly valuable. (At least I dont think they are. Hm. I wonder if the Antiques Roadshow is coming to town any time soon...) 

(Update! My aunt just passed along her stamp collection, as well as the stamp collection she inherited from my Grandmother. Im thrilled and cant wait to inspect them all for more inspiration.) 

Anyway, I love to use my stamps for different projects such as magnets and greeting card decorations. But I dont usually want to use the originals cuz I want to keep them all for me. I wanted to colour photocopy large quantities of the stamps so that I could use them over and over again. I hastily slapped them on to some sheets of construction paper that were lying around with a little piece of scotch tape on the back of each one. Then I took them to Kinko's and made a few colour copies of each page. 

I got the copies home and began looking at them. It occurred to me that the sheets of paper were rather attractive. I had been planning a decoupage project for someone so instead of cutting out all the stamps individually, I just used the sheets as they were. It turned out pretty neat. I used just the pink sheets so all of the stamps were on the same background. 

Stamps seem to me like a perfect decoration on a gift. You can even customize the gift by using stamps from the person's home country. The sheets of paper are also great for wrapping paper. I scanned the pages that I made and then generated PDFs out of them so I can re-print them anytime. I dont know about the legality of it all, but if you would like to download mine here are the links.

Blue

Green

Olive

Orange

Pink

Purple

Use mine or make your own!

Ok, so I checked and it's legal to photocopy these stamps. Well, the American ones, at least. Hooray.

Q. May I photocopy U.S. stamps?

Printed illustrations of United States and foreign stamps are permissible for any nonfraudulent purpose. Black and white illustrations of uncanceled United States and foreign postage stamps are permissible in any size. Color illustrations of uncanceled United States and foreign postage stamps must be less than 3/4 or more than 1½ times the size of the genuine stamps. Canceled United States and foreign postage stamps may be of any size whether the illustrations are in color or in black and white.

Note: Canceled U.S. and foreign postage stamps must bear an official cancellation mark, i.e., the stamps must have been used for postage. Also, the plates and negatives, including glossy prints, of any United States or foreign obligations must be destroyed after their final use for the purpose for which they were made. Printed illustrations of United States and foreign revenue stamps are permissible in black and white only. There are no size restrictions for revenue stamps. ("Know Your Money," U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991, #299-590, page 23)

Excerpted from: http://www.stamps.org/directories/dir_qna.htm

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