Cancelled stamp book:what fun

My friend Theresa and I have been talking on the phone a great deal lately. Late at night, when most people are asleep, she and I talk. She asked me if I had lots of stamps, and I thought she meant uncancelled ones. However, after a few missteps and lots of laughing over misunderstanding, she told me she would include her mini book when she sent some swap items to me that had to be here before her dad returned to Wichita in a few weeks.

Theresa's instructions were simple. No specific theme, but all spreads must center around cancelled postage stamps. I spent most of the day Saturday going through my many cancelled stamps and coming up with the following spreads.
It probably isn't wise to start with the plainest spread, but it's the first one in Theresa's book. After I found the stamp, I searched through the entire book for artwork that would compliment the Mercury stamp. I mounted the stamp on some lovely hand painted fabric that Belinda gifted me with. For some reason, I didn't want to clutter the image and couldn't think of any phrase that wouldn't distract from the opposing spread. For me, this page was finished.
One of my favorite spreads, I started with a red napkin background and added several stamps. The ones on the right are supposed to be packages under the tree, an angel topping the sticker tree, and an old Christmas ornament hanging from a bough. I ran into problems when it was time to add the phrase on the left. Red is a difficult color to match, so I took the other half of the napkin and glued it to a piece of plain printer paper. Then I printed the sentiment and cut it out. Voila!! Everything matched.
I'm not a Disney fan, but I have a friend who sends me letters and packages with Disney stamps. Since I never throw anything away, I luckily found the larger images in a 1970 catalogue on stamp collecting. I used some Basic Grey scraps for the background and some wonderful Dymo tape that Theresa sent me along with the book. I absolutely LOVE this tape, since it's see-through. How cool is that? From a theme I would never have imagined possible, this became one of my favorite spreads. The bonus to all this is that Theresa loves Disney, so I'm sure she'll appreciate this one, too.
Remember when the biplane stamps came out in 2003 celebrating the Wright Brothers 100 years of flight? I saved this part, and I'm glad I did. Then I used every airplane and pilot stamp I had. I started with a dyed paper towel background, which turned out to be just the "Wright" color for the spread. The "via air mail" stickers are from the 70s. Although it's hard to read (I hate my handwriting), the sentiment reads "See what they started."
When I found this image, which is actually the sticky side of the previous spread, it still had an uncancelled stamp attached. I just replaced it with a cancelled one and placed the entire spread over another of my hand dyed paper towels.
I have a friend who had postcards that she just cut the uncancelled stamp images from and gave them to me without using the postage. I couldn't believe it, but these $0.20 stamps on the right are actual postage stamps. On the left is another image from the 1970 stamp collection book. I was surprised to note that the large and colorful $0.15 image from 1970 morphed into the $0.80 monochromatic image from Mt. McKinley we are all too familiar with. The background is dressmaker patterns and some gifted hand painted paper. Once again, I was pleased to see that the orange Dymo tape that Theresa sent me matched perfectly with the images. By being see-through, I didn't have to worry about losing part of the images.

I had a lot of fun making these. I would have made about a dozen more if time permitted. But, I have other projects to start and finish, so I sadly must return this lovely little book to its mailing container and put it in the box that Theresa's dad will pick up soon.