Gonna mail myself a letter -- making custom postage stamps from old books

The more I dabble in mail art, the more fun I have. Some of my ideas come from the book Good Mail Day, which is a good guide to the long history of this art.

Until I read the book, I hadn't realized that some mail artists make their own postage stamps. A few create back stories (and entire fictional countries) to go with their stamps. I'm not that ambitious (yet), but this week I did make a few of my own stamps.

I wasn't planning to, of course. It all started when I was leafing through an old high school yearbook. The grids of class photos reminded me of a sheet of stamps.

I consulted Good Mail Day, which includes a how-to chapter on making your own stamps. To start with, I drew a grid on heavy white paper. Then I made my own perforations with my sewing machine (sans thread).

I cut out a few photos and pasted them onto the grid with matte medium. For realism, I added text (as though the stamps were honoring some great person or event). Finally, I printed the price with a white gel pen.

Can you guess why I chose 3 cents? These fresh-faced students graduated in 1940, when a first-class stamp cost…that's right, 3 cents!

I began noticing stamp-worthy grids everywhere. like this one, in an old guide to cats.

For a little pop art punch, I used colored pencils for the background. I chose 9 cents because…well, I'll let you figure that out.

I affixed one of my stamps to a postcard headed to a mail art pen pal. Don't worry, I added a real stamp before I slipped it into the mailbox. I wonder what the people at the post office will think?

Here's a whole sheet of stamps. It's hard to stop at just 1…or 10…or 20...