Going back to Cali!

Many of my followers may not be aware that I used to live in San Francisco from 1996-1998.  It's one of my favorite cities on Earth!  It's such a beautiful, colorful, dynamic and exciting place. I loved living there in my late teens but at the time, I simply couldn't afford it.  I was also eager to explore other cities and ended up living in many different places since then but I never stopped missing the Bay Area and wondering when/if I would ever live there again.  Anyway, when the opportunity recently arose for me to relocate back to the West Coast I immediately embraced it with open arms.

This coming weekend I will begin my cross-country relocation.  It's going to be quite an endevour since I'm driving a 24' moving truck and towing my car across the country.  Since it's the holiday season I'm keeping my shop open during the move but my ability to ship orders will be limited through Friday, November 14 - Wednesday, November 26.  Hopefully by the end of Thanksgiving weekend, everything will be back up and running at full force.  And if you live on the West Coast, you can expect to receive your orders that much quicker in the very near future. 

Once I am settled in SF, I will be putting a lot more time and effort into broadening the philatelic focus within my shop.  I also (still) have a ton of vintage ephemera to process, mountains of magazines!  Stay tuned for more details and updates!

Snail Mail contribution & 4,000 sales!

Today marks a very important event in the history of my etsy shop.  Since my shop opened in the spring of 2010, today I finally made my 4,000th sale!  I want to thank everyone who has helped support my shop over the years.  While most of my sales have been philatelic and ephemeral in nature, many have also been handmade.  Since I'm still in the process of completing my latest crochet projects let's celebrate with a few images of some of my favorite and most popular rainbow colored vintage stamp sets in the meantime.  My handpicked one of a kind collections have offered inspiration to thousands of crafters and philatelists over the years and I can only hope that I will have the opportunity to continue sharing this joy and creativity around the world for many more years to come.

Finnish philately - Suomi to Finns.

A Royal Rainbow.  These colorful British Machins are so popular, I can barely ever keep them in stock.

 

Recently, an Australian customer of mine contacted me after making a few purchases.  She's writing a book on (one of my favorite subjects) snail mail.  She wanted to include an image of the package and contents of what she purchased from my shop in her book and also asked me to send her another contribution.  Below are images of what I sent her along with some outgoing mail for other etsy customers.  Incase you're curious about how my small sales items are packaged, all customers who purchase 1-2 stamp sets from my shop receive calligraphy embellished envelopes covered in vintage US philately as featured here.

 

Don't just send an ordinary greeting.  Show someone you really care by embellishing your mail with colorful, memorable vintage stamps!



For more information on Michelle's book project and a daily does of all things cute and colorful, she's: michellemackinstosh on Instagram and michellemackintosh.tumblr.com

We make great shapes

I know that Valentine's Day has already come and gone but love is everywhere and I want to share this romantic inspiration.  This is a collage that one of my etsy customers made for her Polish husband out of some color themed stamps from my shop.  In this specific case, she used Scott 1313.  First issued on July 30th, 1966, this stamp honors Poland's millenium.  This is such a great, personal handmade gift that can either be created on a card or matted, framed and displayed as a lasting token of your love and friendship.

I also want to share with you the works of an extremely talented customer of mine based in Australia.  Liska of the Stamp Collective has a great website where you can purchase her creations, read her blog, learn about great gift ideas and download some fabulous printables.

These are some of my favorite creations of hers that are currently on sale in her shop.

One of my favorite insects, a cicada.  Such beautiful handcut detail!

 

I love the subtle rainbow spectrum of this bird family.

 

 

This is such a great idea, a world map created with stamps representing the nations visited on a family trip!

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

March Madness

Well, it's pretty obvious that blogging hasn't really been a major priority for me in 2014!  While the idea of it is perpetually floating around my mind, all I can really say that it's just been a really busy year and I'm sorry that I haven't made time to do it because I quite enjoy it. 

Spring time is a new time.  It's time for new beginnings and fresh starts, starting with updating this cobweb ridden blog. 

Anyway, I haven't stopped crafting.  The winter is the finest time for crocheting and a few months ago, I received a pretty awesome custom request from an etsy customer.  Some of my readers may be familiar with my cOWL's nest 45 RPM record boxes but this was a request for a LP/12" storage box in custom colors.  I decided to crochet various gradient pin stripes and I had some eye popping results.

In other news, after a pretty slow start this past holiday season was the most successful season I've had since I opened my etsy shop.  My sales totally eclipsed all previous years.  I received a multitude of positive feedback, new customers, returning customers and encouragement to keep on doing what I'm doing. 

So what does that mean for the future?  Big, better and prettier plans of course!  Over the next few wks I plan to update my inventory with mountains of new philately.  I also have a ton of other fantastic vintage ephemera to list and then if I can manage to get around to it, there's no shortage of half finished handmade projects that need to get done.  An owl's job is never done.