08/05/2014

Where To Find Vintage Stamps

As you probably know by now, I’m a big fan of using vintage stamps on milestone stationery like wedding invitations and baby announcements. I used vintage stamps for my own wedding invitations, moving announcements,Â and for Sophie’s birth announcements almost two (!!) years ago â€“ and I’ve featured countless wedding invitations with beautiful vintage stamps over the years. Vintage stamps offer a wonderful opportunity to represent your personal style, whether chosen thematically or by color palette. And since unused postage never expires, there are endless options to suit everything from a formal black tie wedding to a casual backyard gathering. Some readers have asked for tips on where to find vintage stamps over the last few weeks, so today I thought I’d share my go-to sources!

Where to Find Vintage Stamps by Oh So Beautiful Paper

Photo by Union Photography from Allison and Mark’s wedding invitations

eBay

If you have the time to search for stamps yourself, eBay is a wonderful resource for finding vintage stamps! This is my personal go-to source, and I like to search for entire sheets of vintage stamps. You can start here,Â and you’ll find sheets of everything from 3Â¢ stamps to recently issued stamps. You can refine the results by adding keywords â€“ like science, love, birds, etc. â€“ but leave out the word “stamp” since you’re already searching by stamp sheets. This method can be super effective if you’re searching for thematic stamps, but you may run into a bit of trouble if you’re trying to group stamps based on a particular color palette.

The best way to search for vintage stamps on eBay is by identifying the Scott number of a particular stamp that you love, since many eBay stamp dealers will use only the Scott number in their listing. For example, a really pretty flower “Love” stamp is #1951, my favorite constellation stamp is #3945, and another favorite stamp with state birds and flowers is #1953.

Where to Find Vintage Stamps by Oh So Beautiful Paper

Photo by me from Sophie’s Constellation-Inspired Birth Announcements

OnlineÂ Shops

There are a bunch of online vintage stamp shops that will curate a collection of stamps for you based on your theme or color palette â€“ such a great option for busy couples or anyone feeling super overwhelmed by the whole process. There are probably a million more that I don’t know about, but here are a few of the shops on my radar:

Underwood Letterpress

A couple more online stamp shop options: Champion StampsÂ and US Mint Sheets. They don’t offer stamp curation, at least that I know of, but you can buy tons of vintage stamps here. Just browse by Scott number through pages and pages of vintage stamps to find what you like â€“ just pay attention to the pricing, which may not be face value.

Where to Find Vintage Stamps by Oh So Beautiful Paper

Photo by Antiquaria from this Vintage-Inspired DIY Save the Date Tutorial

Local stamp dealers, stamp club members, and stamp shows

If you can track down a local stamp dealer or stamp club, they will often have vintage postage that they are willing to part with for face value. I’m told they come by large piles of vintage stamps when they buy stamp collections â€“ but many are considered “worthless” from a stamp collecting point of view. Seriously: just Google your city/area and “stamp club” and see what comes up. You can try emailing the club or see if they list upcoming stamp show dates and go talk to them in person.

Where to Find Vintage Stamps by Oh So Beautiful Paper

Photo by Paisley Quill from Brooks and Erin’s wedding invitations

Local stamp shops andÂ antique stores

If there is aÂ stamp and coin shop in your area, you’re in luck! Stop by and ask to see their face value stamps. Stamp museums also often sell vintage stamps; a fun detail I discovered during a visit to the National Postal Museum earlier this year. You can also try local antique shops â€“ if they don’t have any in the shop they may still be able to connect you with a local dealer with an extra supply of face value stamps. I’ve alsoÂ heard of some people stumbling onto affordable stamp collections at flea markets â€“ just be sure that you’re buying unused/uncanceled stamps!

Where to Find Vintage Stamps by Oh So Beautiful Paper

Photos via Martha Stewart Weddings

A few tips for using vintage stamps:

While you’re searching and shopping for stamps,Â make sure that you have one stamp worth at least 15Â¢ (or more!). Most wedding invitations require a minimum of 70Â¢ postage at the current rate. The 3Â¢ and 8Â¢ stamps are beautiful, but you’ll need a 29Â¢ or 33Â¢ stamp somewhere in the mix to make up the difference.

ConsiderÂ planning out your stamp arrangementÂ ahead of timeÂ to make sure you leave room for an address â€“ and to maximize visual impact. Some stamps look best in a straight row across the top of an envelope, while others look best in a puzzle piece arrangement in the corner. It all depends on the group of stamps you select!

Tell your stationer and/or calligrapher as soon as possible if you plan to incorporate vintage stamps into your wedding stationery. A calligrapher will definitely need to know so he or she can leave enough room at the top of the envelope for your stamps, and a large number of vintage stamps might affect a stationer’s idea to use a non-traditional envelope shape or layout.

If a particular stamp design is in high demand, some dealers will list the stamp at a price greater than face value. I’ve seen this happen to some of the pretty “Love” stamps frequently used on wedding invitations, so if you have your heart set on a particular stamp you might need to factor that cost into your stationery budget. I personally think it’s worth it to find the perfect stamp for the occasion, but the trick is to find stamps that collectors donâ€™t care about yetÂ make a visual impact when assembled as a small group on your envelope.

Those are my tips! Are any of you planning to use vintage stamps soon?

08/01/2014

The Blackberry Collins

When I start writing a post about a classic and venerable cocktail like the Tom Collins, I do some research. I look into the history of the drink, the development of its recipe, all that jazz. But I also like to do research into how people are drinking a particular cocktailÂ now. And what I found for the Tom Collins bums me out a bit. Did you know that people sell Tom Collins mix? I have to repeat that because it leaves me a little flabbergasted: Tom Collins mix. What the what?Â Here’s what a Tom Collins is: a gin sour with some soda water. So simple! And perfect for summer, sweet and tart, crisp and effervescent â€“ especially with the addition of some in-season summer fruit. Not at all in need of a bottled mix.Â â€“ Andrew

Illustration byÂ Shauna LynnÂ for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The Blackberry Collins

2 oz Dry Gin
3/4 oz Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Rich Simple Syrup
Handful ofÂ Blackberries
2 oz Sparkling Water

Combine all of the ingredients (except for the sparkling water, unless you want your shaker to explode) in an empty shaker and muddle theÂ blackberriesÂ into a pulp. Fill the shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a highball glass filled with fresh ice and top with the sparkling water. Stir thoroughly and garnish with fresh blackberries. Enjoy!

Nole and I went blackberry picking last weekend, and we have a ton of blackberries sitting around. It’s only natural that some of them would end up in a cocktail. So that’s what we did: we took a basic Tom Collins recipe and added some blackberries. And the result is pretty good â€“ bursting with sweet fruit and cold bubbles. Have one or two on the porch before summerÂ is over and you’ll never consider a bottled mix ever.

Didn’t I say something about history? Right. The Tom Collins is probably a couple hundred years old and, not surprisingly, appeared right after Charles Plinth invented the first soda water dispenser in London in 1813. Credit usually goes toÂ John Collins, a waiter or maybe a bartender at London’s Limmer’s Hotel, who took the commonsense step of adding Plinth’s soda water to a gin sour. By the 1870s, the drink was showing up in print as theÂ TomÂ Collins, maybe because bartenders had started making the drink with Old Tom Gin instead of the original Genever or maybe because everyone was drinking way too many of them to remember if it wasÂ Tom or John or Jim, so let’s all just agree to call them Tom Collins and order a few more.

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

07/29/2014

DIY Mini Disco Ball Place Cards

Every now and then, I think people love to see a quirky, maybe even out of place detail, used in an interesting way. These are the conversation starters and the little things that make your event memorable. So when the disco ball started making its way into tropical destinations,Â I just couldn’t get enough of the boho beach vibes mixed with something usually saved for the club or ballroom. I decided to stick with mini versions and turn them into a super fun place card and favor all in one. These could also easily be made in a larger version as a vase or pot if you are looking for a little more bling to add to your table! â€“Â Lauren

Supplies

Mini disco ball ornaments with styrofoam center (I found mine hereâ€¦ yes they are already selling ornaments! â€“ you can also find them in various sizes on Amazon)

Small succulents or air plants

X-acto knife

Awl (or something just as pointy and made out of metal)

Your choice of name cards

Step 1: Remove the ornament top, this will be the bottom

Step 2: Flip over and begin to remove the top mirror pieces with your knife, stopping once you have a circle that is about 1″ in diameter

Step 3: Use the knife to cut into the styrofoam around the circle, pop that out and dig into the foam with the awl to create a bowl for your plant.

Step 4: Plant your succulent or place your air plants inside and you’re done!

The bigger the plant, the more unstable the ball is going to be. So make sure to pick lightweight plants that aren’t too tall. Finish your table design by adding some candles to the table. The disco balls will catch the light and add a fun light show on the table. Plus with all this glitz at each place setting, you won’t want much competing with them! Photo Credits:Â Lauren SaylorÂ for Oh So Beautiful Paper

07/24/2014

OSBP at Home: Small Bathroom Renovation Inspiration

This is the 30th week of my pregnancy, and I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve hit the nesting phase of this pregnancy. I’ve been running around trying to take care of small projects around the house, and my dad is coming down in a couple of weeks to help with a few things that we’re not able to do on our own. Prepare yourselves for a few more home-related posts over the next couple of weeks: it’s all I can think about! And there are a couple of big projects that I can’t seem to shake from my mind. The one that I’m most anxious to check off the list is the renovation of our main bathroom. As I mentioned here â€“Â the bathroom really needs to be completely gutted,Â which is kind of overwhelming for a first time homeowner. So while we figure out how to tackle this project, I thought I’d share some of the inspiration that I’ve gathered so far!

Photo by Brittany Ambridge via Domino from Ali Cayne’s Home Tour

Whatever we decide to do, I want to stay true to the traditional feel of our older home. Our current bathroom (and the only full bathroom in the entire house) is dark and unwelcoming, with modern touches that feel out of keeping with our 1920s rowhouse. The walls are painted a dark teal and paired with dark slate tile around the bathtub and dark finishings, all of which make the room feel very small â€“Â but aside from all that, the slate tile is literally flaking away and leaking everywhere. I can’t wait to rip the entire thing out! We decided pretty early on that we’d replace the tile around the bath and shower with bright white subway tile, which makes a regular appearance on my Pinterest page. Ahhhh…. like a breath of fresh air!

Riesco & Lapres via Desire to Inspire

But the other walls? I’m not sure. Continue tile around the room? Another treatment like wainscoting or beadboard? The room is really small and we have shelving running along the wall behind the toilet to provide some much-needed storage, so there probably isn’t enough available wall space to justify wallpaper (as much as I love the idea) but I think I’d like to do something to help break up the rest of the wall space. And a light paint color on the rest of the wall to help the room feel bigger.

via La Dolce Vita by Paloma Contreras

Unknown (left) // Rue (right)

I’ve been loving the look of black and white bathrooms for a couple of years now. Our bathroom doesn’t currently receive any natural light, so I don’t think it could handle a lot of black (and I don’t want to just replicate the dark and unwelcoming feeling of our current bathroom), but we do have the option of opening up an existing skylight box in the ceiling. If we did that, maybe we could pull off a black ceiling or a darker feature wall behind the shelves?

Christopher Sturman via Desire to Inspire

Other than that, I’m pretty sure that we’ll need to replace the floor tile since it’s unlikely to survive the removal of the bathtub and surrounding tile â€“ and we’ve always loved the idea of using classic black and white hex floor tile. I also love the idea of incorporating brass touches in the fixtures, some wire and straw baskets for textureÂ (and pretty storage), and a couple of new accessories. But we have to get through the big stuff first before I can start thinking about accessories!

1. Ashley Capp via Style Me Pretty Living; 2. Brass shower rod from Signature Hardware; 3. Hex tile from Home Depot; 4. Bathroom shelving + storage; 5. Bathtub caddy from Anthro; 6. Wire storage basket from West Elm; 7. Shower curtain from Anthro; 8. Ogee countertop edge detail by Grant K Gibson Interior Design via Granite Gurus

Have any of you gone through a full bathroom renovation? Any advice for this first-time renovator/home owner with a new baby on the way?

07/18/2014

OSBP At Home: Garden Update

It’s been well over a year since we moved into our house, and while progress inside the house has been a bit slower than I would have liked, I’ve been spending a lot of time out in the garden. It’s the first time I’ve had any real gardening space since I moved to DC more than 10 years ago, and I’m really really enjoying it. Last year I shared some of my plans for our outdoor space. Time for an update!

Our house is a typical DC rowhouse: long and narrow. We don’t have a ton of space to work with, but I’ve been trying to maximize what we’ve got. We have a small garden bed in our backyard patio, which I’ve filled with lilacs, peonies, roses, and a few other perennial varieties. I save annuals for pots arranged along the fence on the other side of the patio so that I don’t have to worry too much about them once the cold weather sets in.

Our backyard garden is my happy place in mid-to-late spring when the peonies and lilacs are blooming. Everything was late this year thanks to the neverending winter, but once the warmer weather arrived in April everything just exploded â€“ especially my lilacs. I have a total of four lilac bushes, all planted in the back of the garden bed closest to the fence, and the smell was positively intoxicating when they all bloomed. I wish they lasted forever!

The lilacs were quickly followed by peonies â€“ I have five plants in varying colors of white and pink (pale pink Sarah Bernhardt, Coral and Gold, and a hot pink variety whose name I’ve forgotten). This was the view that greeted me when I came home from the National Stationery Show in late May:

I snapped some more photos a few weeks ago, at the very tail end of peony season, and with the exception of the peonies most of these flowers are still going pretty strong in the garden. We planted a border of pink and purple saliva in the garden bed, and my David Austin rose bushes bloom frequently as long as I deadhead regularly. I planted some impatiens under the rosebushes for a bit of added color, all of which seem to be growing quite happily. There is a small white crape myrtle in the back corner, which has been in bloom the last few weeks and I hope will grow to provide some much-needed shade over the next couple of years. Since these photos were taken, some yellow dinner plate dahlias have grown in around the peonies and are slowly taking over the garden much to my dismay â€“ I need to do more research on (successfully) growing those big monsters!

We also have a few potted strawberry plants â€“ Sophie LOVED picking the fresh berries when they were in season. There’s a small bed that runs along the stairs down to our unfinished basement, where I’ve planted a wisteria vine â€“ which surprised me by blooming the tiniest little wisteria this spring! â€“ and a few other partial-sun perennials. I’d love to eventually build a pergola over our back door and train the wisteria to grow over it. I also have a small potted viburnum; I’m waiting for it to get a bit larger before transplanting to its permanent home in the front garden.

Potted plants along the fence on the opposite side of the backyard. We recently added a few marigolds (to help deter flower-eating pests), a dark purple opal basil plant, and a couple of zinnia for some additional summer color. The clematis vine is one of my favorites in the entire garden. The flowers are so romantic! Future plans for this area include a vertical herb garden and possibly a small vertical vegetable garden â€“ next year!

Finally, another small partial sun garden bed that runs along the path next to our garage. I planted a hellebore, some jasmine, a couple of Japanese painted ferns, some impatiens, begonias, purple coral bells, and a bleeding heart all the way in the back (which is now the size of a small hydrangea!). I love love love the combination of the painted fern and impatiens!

And that’s our garden â€“ at least for the moment! Sadly, along with DC summer heat and humidity, the mosquitos and earwigs have arrived in force. The mosquitos in particular make it difficult to enjoy the backyard for long periods of time, so I haven’t been spending as much time outdoors as I’d normally like to. I’m trying to learn more about garden pest control in general, since I’ve also battled rose slugs and normal slugs in the backyard. We’ve also been contending with an infestation of the horrible-sounding Dead Man’s Fingers in one corner of the garden bed. It pre-dates any of the plants in the garden bed (we started fresh when we moved in last year), so I’m worried there might be some dead tree root buried deep in the soil causing the fungus. Anyone out there have any experience successfully battling Dead Man’s Fingers?? I have so much to learn about gardening!

All photos by me, via my Canon DSLR and via Instagram

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Where To Find Vintage Stamps

The Blackberry Collins

DIY Mini Disco Ball Place Cards

OSBP at Home: Small Bathroom Renovation Inspiration

OSBP At Home: Garden Update