How to Use Vintage Stamps

I love, love, LOVE using vintage postage stamps on envelopes. They add a little something special to everything from wedding invitations to dinner and cocktail party invitations to baby announcements. 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 every type of occasion – from a formal black tie wedding to a casual backyard gathering. Here are a few of my tips for how to use vintage stamps – plus, I put a collection together with some of my favorite vintage stamps that you can use in your own projects!

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Oh So Beautiful Paper for eBay

How to Use Vintage Stamps / La Happy

Photo Credit: La Happy Design & Calligraphy

1. Add it Up

First things first: vintage postage must add up to current postage rates. While searching and shopping for stamps, make sure that you have one stamp worth at least 25¢ (or more!). Wedding invitations and birth announcements mailed in a larger envelope usually require a minimum of 71¢ postage. The 3¢ and 8¢ stamps are great for rounding out a color palette or subject theme, but you’ll need a 29¢ or 33¢ stamp in the mix to make up the difference in the total postage amount.

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Wondrous Whimsy

Photo Credit: Diana McGregor Photography / Calligraphy by Wondrous Whimsy

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Anne Robin Calligraphy and Underwood Letterpress

Photo Credit: Stephanie Collins Photography / Calligraphy by Anne Robin / Vintage Postage by Underwood Letterpress

2. Plan it Out

Plan your stamp arrangement ahead of time to make sure you leave room for an address – 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 stamps you select!

How to Use Vintage Stamps

Calligraphy: The Weekend Type / Floral Styling: The Moss & Rose / Styling: Two Be Wed / Photo Credits: Korie Lynn Photography

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Anne Robin Calligraphy and Underwood Letterpress

Photo Credit: Stephanie Collins Photography / Calligraphy by Anne Robin / Vintage Postage by Underwood Letterpress

3. Color Theory

The easiest way to group vintage stamps together? By color! Let your wedding color palette guide your vintage stamp selections and your envelopes will shine! You can even address the envelopes using ink in a complementary color to make your envelopes even more special and complete the overall look.

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Antiquaria Design

Photo Credit: Antiquaria Design Studio

4. Personal Geography

I love it when couples share a glimpse of their personal history – and geography! – in their vintage stamp selections. It can be as simple as a stamp with the city or state where the couple met, along with stamps of their home state. Perhaps they grew up in Montana and Texas but met in college in DC. When placed together on an envelope, these stamps tell such a fun story!

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Coral Pheasant

Photo Credit: Coral Pheasant

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Lauren Chism Fine Papers

Photo Credit: Lauren Chism Fine Papers

5. Stick to a Theme

Love science? Have a passion for architecture? Maybe you’re both crazy for horses, or you met while working on a political campaign. Whatever your interests, let them shine in your envelope postage! You can find vintage postage stamps for practically any topic or theme, from travel to modern art.

How to Use Vintage Stamps / Blue Eye Brown Eye Calligraphy

Photo Credit: Blue Eye Brown Eye Calligraphy

6. Pretty Botanicals

If themes aren’t your thing, go with flowers! My favorite vintage stamps feature floral designs – and they look so incredibly beautiful when grouped together on a wedding invitation envelope! My favorite floral stamps are the Mississippi and Alabama statehood stamps, along with this love stamp.

p.s. Where to find (and buy) vintage stamps and more inspiration for mixing vintage stamps

This post was created in partnership with eBay. All content and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that make Oh So Beautiful Paper possible!

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations

Happy Monday everyone! Designer Kate Holgate is an absolute master at blending modern and vintage-inspired details, and these wedding invitations are no exception! Kate designed these invitations for a recent wedding in Miami, combining custom patterns inspired by the architectural details of the wedding venue with modern type and color choices. How gorgeous are those blind impression patterns??

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations by Kate Holgate / Oh So Beautiful Paper

From Kate: Dane and Jenn are a lovely couple recently married in Miami. I really enjoyed getting to know them as we collaborated on their invitation suite. Not only were they incredibly gracious, they had impeccable taste and fantastic ideas. The location of the ceremony ​is a gorgeous historic Italian estate on Biscayne Bay called the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. The villa is a National Historic Landmark bursting with visual inspiration — from beautiful, ornate architectural details to gorgeous flowers and fountains.

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations by Kate Holgate / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Dane and Jenn wanted a sophisticated design that incorporated elements from the past yet still looked modern. To accomplish this, I designed several custom patterns inspired by interior details of the villa (floors, stained-glass windows, tiles) paired with modern typography and hand-written accents. I used a clean color palette of bright white and grays with pops of blush and sea foam green to balance the heavily-textured design.

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations by Kate Holgate / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Boxcar Press did an outstanding job with intricate letterpress work and Miami calligrapher Natalia Otalora added her special touch to the envelopes. I couldn’t be happier with the elegant results. Cheers to Dane and Jenn!

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations by Kate Holgate / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations by Kate Holgate / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Miami Architecture-Inspired Wedding Invitations by Kate Holgate / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Thanks Kate!

Design: Kate Holgate

Save the Date Printing: HiTech Color

Wedding Invitation Letterpress Printing: Boxcar Press

Calligraphy: Natalia Otalora

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Kate Holgate

A Kentucky Mule

This month, we thought we’d have some fun with bourbon cocktails. Bourbon, that most American of spirits, is rich and sweet and brown and ideal for fall cocktails. We had in mind lots of dark, brooding bourbon cocktails for fall, but suddenly we find ourselves with temperatures near the 80s in November, so we’re starting out the month a little differently, with a drink that fits this weird in-between weather we’re having, the Kentucky Mule. – Andrew

Kentucky Mule Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The Kentucky Mule

2 oz Kentucky Bourbon
3/4 oz Lime Juice
4-6 oz Ginger Beer

Combine the bourbon and lime juice in a copper mug or highball glass filled with crushed ice, then top with the ginger beer. Give the drink a stir, garnish with a mint bouquet, and enjoy!

Kentucky Mule Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

The Kentucky Mule is a descendant of the Moscow Mule, a drink invented in the 1940s as gimmick to convince Americans to drink more vodka. At the time, American drinkers were apparently more discerning and had not yet fallen in love with the Russian spirit that is – by U.S. law – odorless and colorless and flavorless. (In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a fan of vodka, because I wouldn’t drink a tasteless spirit any more than I would eat a flavorless steak.)

The combination of tart lime and spicy, zippy ginger beer offers a smooth and easy template that you can apply to spirits with actual flavor. Like bourbon. The Kentucky Mule has those rich, oaky notes of the bourbon, but is a refreshing, effervescent drink with a lot of pep to it.

Kentucky Mule Cocktail Recipe / Liquorary for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Bourbon is a whiskey made from at least 51% corn. That corn lends bourbon a sweeter profile than other whiskeys, that same sweetness you get when you bite into a roasted ear of sweat corn on the Fourth of July. Not all of it is made in Kentucky, but a lot of it is, and it gets its name from the eastern part of Kentucky that was once called Old Bourbon and contains, fittingly enough, Bourbon County. This is where American colonists found huge tracts of land perfect for growing corn, and bourbon eventually would come to outstrip rum and rye whiskey, the original American spirits.

(Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, where we’ve been posting our experiments before they make their way onto this column!)

Glassware by Liquorary

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

 

Happy Weekend!

Happy Friday everyone! We’ve definitely entered cold and flu season here in DC – my entire family has been through the ringer over the last week! Today it’s poor little Alice’s turn to have a cold. So I’m off to snuggle my sweet almost toddler and hope that she feels better soon! But in the meantime…

June Letters / Maya Angelou Quote via Instagram / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Lettering by Jess Levitz via Instagram

…a few links for your weekend!

This week on Oh So Beautiful Paper:

That’s it for me this week! Check back a bit later for this week’s cocktail recipe – and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I’ll see you back here on Monday! xoxo

Productivity and Daily Routines

Hi Everyone! Today I thought I’d do something a little bit different and share a glimpse into my everyday routine. It’s a fairly new routine, since it has only been a couple of months since Sophie started preschool and Alice started full time daycare, and I’m still trying to figure out what works best for me as a mom and creative entrepreneur.

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

My day starts with getting the girls dressed and ready to go to preschool and daycare. We’re a single car family, so I drive and drop everyone off in the morning and then pick them all back up at the end of the day. In between I work out of my home office/studio. The round trip drop-off and pick up commute usually takes about an hour, which is tough since that’s a good chunk of work time. Sophie gets out of preschool at 3 pm every afternoon, so my challenge is to squeeze in as much productive work time as possible before I go pick her up. I normally work for a couple of hours at night after the kids are asleep, but I try to get as much done during those daytime hours as possible!

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

If you talk to any creative entrepreneur, they’ll tell you that email is one of their biggest productivity challenges. There’s just so much of it! Responding to incoming emails, organizing and archiving messages, and sending outgoing messages can eat up a huge chunk of my day. I use a service called Unroll.Me to help clean out my inbox and keep it manageable. Unroll.Me allows you to unsubscribe quickly and easily from unwanted newsletters and combine the rest of those newsletters – the ones you want to receive but don’t want crowding up your inbox – into a once daily email digest called “The Rollup.” I’ve actually used Unroll.Me for a few years now and I absolutely love it. I was thrilled when Unroll.Me reached out about helping to spread the word about their new iOS app!

Unroll.Me for iOS / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Unroll.Me is fast, simple, and totally FREE – and it really couldn’t be easier to use. After you sign up, Unroll.Me will scan your inbox to identify subscriptions. Then with a simple click of the mouse you can choose to unsubscribe (Unroll.Me does it for you), add the email to your Rollup, or keep it in your inbox. I even use my Rollup to keep all the newsletters from my favorite stationers and artists in one place! The entire process seriously takes about five minutes. When I first signed up for Unroll.Me years ago I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Unsubscribing from those emails –instead of having to delete them every single week – got them completely out of my mental space so I could focus on the things that matter. It sounds silly, but that kind of mental weight can have a huge impact on your productivity!

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

After responding to emails and sorting through any editorial submissions that came in overnight, I turn my attention to my to-do list for the day. Every day is different when running a blog depending on what’s on the agenda for that particular week. Some days involve DIY project production and taking photos, while other days involve searching for cards and products to feature in round up posts. I like to keep a colorful notepad on my desk for jotting down reminders and ideas along with a desk pad calendar to keep track of things like doctor appointments and visits from out-of-town relatives. I also find that I’m more productive if I keep a few pretty or inspirational trinkets on my desk, like vintage stamps and business cards from my friends that make me smile every time I look at them.

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

Productivity and Daily Routines / Oh So Beautiful Paper

That’s my day! What do you do to stay productive during the day? If you want to give Unroll.Me a try you can sign up right here! I’ve used Unroll.Me to manage over 1200 subscriptions over the years – I’d love to hear how many subscriptions you find!

This post was created in partnership with Unroll.Me. All content and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that make Oh So Beautiful Paper possible!