Here's a suite I'm sending off to Utah for a styled shoot this week. First off, I have to say I am not a purple person.
Of all the colors it has always been my least favorite. For some reason though, when I was looking at Amber Michelle Event's mood board for the photo shoot I was really drawn to the berries & their colors.
I just leaned into it, even though it's not my usual palette choice. I even had to run to Paper Source since I didn't have anything in purple in my studio! I had snippets of every other color but no violet hues.
I am so happy I went against my own grain this time. The abstract watercolor berries in blue violet & red violet swirling together is my favorite part of the stationery suite. Well, that and the stamps...
The love affair I have with paper ephemera started when I was young. I used to hoard packaging, labels, stationery from traveling and my prized collection of Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball & Judy Garland stamps.
Fast forward to preparing my own wedding invitations in 2013 & I became obsessed with vintage stamps overnight. Once I realized I could find old stamps online that were still usable to mail my own invites it was game on.
It was just a bonus that it wouldn't cost too much more than the standard stamps at the post office. Some even cost less than their face value if you search long enough! The main thing you have to do is make sure to search for 'unused' stamps. They can't have any markings on them for the post office to still accept them.
Also, a good rule of thumb for mailing wedding invitations is to go into the post office and have them weigh one.
They'll let you know exactly how much postage is necessary for the weight. I normally even pad it to just to be safe. No one wants returned invitations, plus you can never have enough mini art pieces decorating your envelope!
The way I see it, you pour all this energy into making beautiful invitations with all the bells & whistles so why not apply the same attention to detail with art on the outside of the envelope too!
*I speak from a place of stationery art-loving nerd. If paper isn't your way of showing your love & style, don't spend money on it. Don't spend money on any aspects of your wedding if you don't really care about it. Celebrate your love in whatever ways that are most meaningful to you both. No wedding industrial complex pressuring here... Ew.
However, if you're wanting to use vintage stamps to just make envelopes look pretty for styled photos- save a bunch & buy used stamps! I love the look of the postal markings!
You can really dive into depths of Etsy & Ebay if you want to find specifically themed stamps. Ebay has better deals, but you'll have to do more sifting. Examples of themed stamps I've purchased are: dinosaur, geode, fruit, films, travel posters, cacti, musicians, lighthouses, berries like the ones you see here, & the list goes on & on.
Stamp lots are perfect if you're wanting to save some money & are okay getting whatever you get from all over the world. What I do now though is get lots of 500 used stamps from Stamps for Crafts. When they arrive, I turn on some Netflix and start sorting through them by color. Once they're all separated out in about 20 piles, I store them in little envelopes with their color name on front.
Then when I'm ready to pretty up an envelope, I just grab the envelope with the color I'm looking for & my stationery suite is complete within a minute or two!
For the most part, I have to use double sided tape on really old stamps since their glue isn't in the best condition anymore.
I hope this was helpful if you've been eyeing vintage stamps but don't know where to start!
