Artistamps

Artistamps, also known as Faux Postage, are tiny pieces of art designed to look like postage stamps. Artistamps may be hand stamped either from commercially produced or hand-carved rubberstamps, digitally produced, collaged or hand drawn. Many artist will make their artistamps 'commemorative' of some event, some 'invent' a country and design a series of stamps that somehow define this place.

Artistamps may be produced in many formats as well. Some are designed as a whole sheet picture which is then broken down into smaller pieces for the individual stamps. Others will produce a sheet of stamps that are related but somehow individualized. And, if using digitized layout, it is very easy to tile graphics so that a full sheet of identical images are produced.

For materials, gummed paper is a popular medium as are full sheet stickers. The method of producing perforations varies as well. Pre-perforated gummed paper is available and there are some who will sell their services for perforating completed sheets. For at-home perfing there are some using dressmakers wheels, unthreaded sewing machine, or simply printing the perforation dots on with the computer.

I have only done a few artistamps. All of them are digitized scans of my own artworks, printed on full sheets of peel-and-stick label paper. They are printed on my color printer and sprayed with acrylic. Then I use my sewing machine to perf the sheets.

Here are three Artistamps I have done.