Category: Mailart & Artistamps

Disneyland is celebrating its 55th anniversary.  I’m commemorating it with an artistamp design featuring art by my mother, Muriel Joan Bernier (1919 – 2010). The artwork at left, which was also on the Fantasyland board game, was based on my mother’s art. She freelanced for Disney in the 1950s. I remember her drawing lots &…

It’s 2010. It’s time for an artistamp swap. Swaps are such fun! Update: In 2010, I attempted some digital artistamp swaps at AJ (ArtistsJournals community at Yahoo Groups).  It wasn’t a huge success.  I’m not sure that people understand what artistamps actually are. Artistamps are faux postage… totally made-up, fake postage, often from your own…

Q: I want to make some artistamps by hand, not necessarily on the computer. How do I make my art the right size for stamps? Should I be creating the art in stamp size, to start with? A: Most commercial artists work much larger than the finished, printed product will be. For example, a standard…

If you’re new to Adobe’s PhotoShop program, it can be overwhelming to figure out all the fabulous bells & whistles it offers. However, it’s a wonderful tool for artistamps! When I wrote this article around 2002, I was using Adobe 5.0. The commands may vary slightly if you’re using a different version, but the concepts…

I wrote the first version of this article around 2002. New perforating options are constantly being developed, tested and marketed. So, this article is dated, and remains at this site as a starting point for people who want to explore perforating options for artistamps. — One of the first questions people have, is how to…

These are a few stamps from my own collection of inexpensive, international postage stamps. They are “real” stamps, used on mail. I like them because they look exotic and/or old, and I gather ideas from them. I’m providing them as inspiration. You can copy* them, tweak them with your own color and design ideas, or……

Adhesive backing for artistamps If you’re sending your artistamps for others to use, you probably want to make them as much like “real” postage as possible. For example, you’ll want the recipient to be able to lick the back of the stamp so the glue becomes moist and will hold the stamp in place. The…

Glue recipes vary from great to disastrous. But, they can be a fine alternative to “lickable” adhesive-backed paper and commercially prepared glues, described in my article, Glues and adhesives for artistamps. Climate differences can affect how well a glue recipe works. Likewise, personal taste–sometimes literally–can influence your choices. Artistamp genius Jas kindly sent this recipe…

Artistamps can be described as fake postage. Some people call them faux postage, Cinderellas, postoids, or even real postage. But at the post office, they may call them “fake.” In other words, if you use artistamps in place of “real” postage, the post office is likely to return your mail, postage due. Those of us…

I’ve been making artistamps since around 1978. My first stamps were handmade, one by one, and sent with my zines of that era. I hand-carved a border that looked like a perforated stamp edge, and stamped it repeatedly to create the ‘frame’ of each stamp. Then, I put art in the middle. At present, I…