Megan Hobby Kauffman
Artist, maker, and professional joy-bringer. From my North Carolina studio, Mayhen Press, I whip up colorful, story-filled designs that make everyday life a little brighter (and a lot more fun).
I am drawn to unique artforms. I love music boxes, automata, pop-up books and people’s collections of tiny things. When I was between the ages of about 10-15 I had a little box that housed all of my cancelled stamp collection. It was beautiful. I would take it out, look at it, arrange and re-arrange the stamps by color, subject, stamp value- whatever new category I could think of. I loved my stamp collection.
Then I grew up...
I started moving all over the place and my precious stamp collection got left behind.
So, about a year ago, I started searching for vintage stamps. Not expensive ones. I don’t collect because of the value of the stamp, I collect because I like the colors and the art on the stamps. I found a beautiful lot of stamps on an Etsy shop and ordered them.
I was in heaven when they arrived! Sorting through the tiny, beautiful images was inspiring and cathartic. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them so I waited to see what I might think of. Then, there it was, the perfect thing to combine my little stamp collection and my patterned papers- a tiny stamp book!
I found a tutorial by book artist Bel Mills of Scrap Paper Circus for a tiny stamp collection book. I pulled out some scrap pieces of the dandelion cross patterned paper and pulled some old security envelopes out of the recycling and got to work.
Supplies for this project:
- Heavier weight patterned paper or cardstock
- photo mounting squares or double-sided tape
- Security envelopes with pattern on the inside or origami papers
- Scissors
- Glue
- Something small to put inside the book (stamps, pressed flowers, drawings, small photos, cut out signatures of loved ones, etc)
This little book doesn’t take long to make and Bel makes it super easy to follow along in her tutorial! I’d love to make one to hold pressed flowers or make a set of little stamp books. I hope you’ll get in touch with your creativity and give this a try yourself. I’d love to see what you create!
Happy making!
