Whenever I visit my parents in Chico, CA. I try to stop by The Penny Ranch. It is a shop filled with baseball cards, coins, comic books and a lot of collectibles. I go there for the postage stamps. The owner knows I don't want valuable stamps but just a lot of old cancelled stamps. He brings out shoe boxes and old cigar boxes filled with them. I usually buy those boxes from him. I like the cigar boxes as much as the stamps. He also sells me a lot of old letters and he knows I love airmail envelopes. I will save most of those images for another post. Here is a collection of some of my boxes that have come home with me for my art, collage, card making and my creative re-use workshops.
I started a "Stamp Cake" series using the cancelled postage stamps. They are so much fun to make and I am working on a series to reproduce. I cannot make them by hand fast enough to keep up with all the birthdays. The cake stand is made from discarded book pages, junk mail, and the insides of security envelopes. I cut the candles out from the sides of vintage airmail envelopes and the flames from are made from scrap paper.
I could not resist putting in one image of some of the old letters I have bought
from The Penny Ranch. I am working on some collage pieces with these envelopes and stamps.
