DIY Stamp Picture Collage

Ever since I was a little girl, my mother started collecting stamps for me. As I got older, I continued to save them myself  and before I knew it, I had a pretty extensive collection. When I saw this stamp picture in the West Elm catalog, it gave me the idea to do something similar to display some of my favorite stamps.

 (Credit: West Elm spring 2011 catalog)

A few months ago, I found this really inexpensive picture frame at Wal-Mart that cost me no more than $9 at the time. I knew this frame would be perfect for my stamp picture collage.

                                                 

First, I took all of the glass pieces out of the frame and traced around them on some sketch paper that I already had at home.

I then arranged all of the stamps I wanted to display in my collage on two of the pieces of cut sketch paper before using a clear glue stick to paste them.  For the center piece of my frame, I decided to display a collection of buttons, which I also accumulated over the years. Once they were arranged, I used a glue gun to glue them to the paper. For the other two frames, I used a picture which was given to me as a gift long ago (luckily,it fit like a glove) and an old post card I received, which I could not bring myself to part with since I am a lover of art.

and voilà... here is my version of the stamp picture