Playdate: Postal Ephemera

If you’re new here, or need a reminder, my Playdate project is my 2026 challenge to myself to take time each month to play in the studio. So far, I’ve played with sheet music and vintage magazines, and for March, I moved on to the ephemera of the postal service.

Postal ephemera is a broad category that includes letters, stamps, stamp albums, mailing envelopes, cancellations — all the small pieces of paper that have traveled through the mail.

I love the paper, the words, the border art. There's so much to love about what comes through the post. But working with it comes with its own set of challenges.

Stamps are so immediately recognizable that they become an overwhelming focal point in a composition. Envelopes need to be unfolded before use, because the existing adhesive can be difficult to work around and tends to cause bubbles. And with letters, I'm reluctant to use someone's writing directly — the topics are often deeply personal, and even if the writer died long ago, those secrets feel like they deserve some protection.

One of my go-to solutions for managing all that text — especially on stamp album pages, which are among my favorite papers to work with — is to bring them to the gelli plate.

I can cover up most of the printed squares, the words, and the small stamp illustrations while still taking advantage of the beautiful paper and border art. I'll use Golden Open acrylics when I want some transparency, or Golden SoFlat matte paints when I want to go completely opaque.

Playing on the gelli plate has led to some interesting discoveries. If I leave the hinges in place, they act as a mask — I can often remove them carefully afterward, and they leave behind small squares with just a hint of imagery or writing coming through. Painting over these pages with a brayer is also a quick way to create backgrounds for letterpress printing. Alternatively, I put paint directly onto my glass mixing surface or palette paper and smoosh (very technical term) the paper over it for a monoprint effect — a great way to capture texture, since the gelli plate tends to lift it away.

Specifically with stamps, I've started cleaning my palette knife on them or using up excess paint from the gelli plate. This leaves a little of the original image while adding beautiful texture. I can then cut away the perforated edges and end up with something that reads as a small square rather than an obvious stamp.

I've also tried printing on manila envelopes, though I still need to figure out how to better mask any text or imagery I want to preserve — I've accidentally covered up some good things. The envelope paper is also quite thick, which creates a lot of texture on the print; I'm still figuring out how it behaves with gel medium when collaging.

For sourcing postal ephemera, I've found it at Goodwill, antique stores, estate sales, eBay, and from family. My favorite discovery is finding pieces tucked inside old books — used as bookmarks or slipped in with the intention of being read later. 

I haven’t even written about using these papers in my collage art yet; that’s a topic that deserves its own blog post.