First UN Braille Stamp

Wow, the UN is issueing its first Braille stamp this June. Although this is not the first and certainly not the least Braille stamp issued around the world, I am pretty surprsied to see it coming. Only one stamp out of the 6 stamps set will be embossed with raised Braille characters. The stamp will be issued by the NY office. The Braille characters spell the word "UN" and I am going to touch the words and pretend I know Braille. :-P

Orchids

Hum..I guess I ran out of ideas and I've been lazy so I just pulled some old covers I made "years" ago to show you. Hehe...

Orchids have a big family. There are white orchids, green orchids, purple ones, big, small and they also come in different shapes. Love their variety but they are usually not fragrant. Or at least not the ones I've seen.

The one Orchid that I always run over to see them are the ones that shape like a slipper. They look really cute and I can put a finger of mine in the little pouch. Not that it's right to do so, but I just couldn't resist..sigh..

Couldn't believe I made this 3 years ago. It was actually my first UN FDC that I made for myself at the stamp show. I got the artist and also Robert Grey, who was the UNPA cheif to sign it.

Yousuf Karsh & Winston Churchill

Yousuf Karsh was the most famous Canadian portrait photographer in the 20th century. He had taken pictures of celebrities, politicians, scientists, novelist and people from all sorts of backgrounds. One of his most famous works was a portrait of Winston Churchill taken right after his speech in the Canadian Parliament in 1941. This photo brought him frame and success later on as a professional photographer.






This month, to celebrate Yousuf’s achievement, Canada post will issue a set of stamps showing 2 of Yousuf's most beautiful works and a self portrait of the artist himself.

I thought the photo of Audrey Hepburn was beautiful! And coincidently, while I walked past by an odd little variety store the other day, I found this amazing postcard of Audrey. It is exactly the same photo! I think I will make a pretty nice Maximum card out of this.

Most of Yousuf's portraits are in black and white, no props or decorations to distract attention from the model. The portrait of Audrey, captures the essence of Audrey's on screen personality, a sense of innocence, pureness and holiness.

Audrey is definitely one of my all time favorite actress. Sir Winston Churchill was a great historian and writer but I thought he was too much of an imperialist in heart.

Next UN issue: Endangered Spices

This is a very popular and my favorite stamp series from the UN. The series has been running into its 13th year and still going strong. I guess most collectors have a soft spot for these lovely and amazing creatures living around us. I wish we as human being could have contributed more to help them coexist amongst us.

This year, the stamps will be showing various animals from the sea. I am seeing Seals, corals, whales and sea horses. They are beautiful. Did you notice that all of the endangered spices stamps are actually painted by an artist? I don’t recall seeing any photos of any sort.

And every year, they also issue a special silk cachet envelope with one stamp from each office cancelled. I usually buy a couple and have the artist signs them.

Since this series is issued in March every year and coincides with one of our semiannual stamp shows here in New Year, the UN also provides a special hand cachet.

2008 Year of the Rat

Hello readers: Just to let you know, that the year 2008 is the year of the rat in Chinese Zodiac. I know some people who are born in the year of rat and they are indeed very ambitions people.
If you are born in that year, you are welcomed to leave me your address and I will send a cover to you at the beginning of 2008.


If your countries issue Zodiac stamps, please send me a cover if you are able to, if not, it's ok with me, it's a token of friendship.

The US will issue this stamp for it's new Chinese Zodiac series in 2008. This is the first stamp in the 12-year series. I don't like the design very much because I think it lack originality. The images of red lanterns are very common in Chinese society. Yea, I am a hard to please girl. :)

The Year Of The Rat - Characteristics
1912, 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996

People born in the Year of the Rat are noted for their charm and attraction for the opposite sex.
They work hard to achieve their goals, acquire possessions, and are likely to be perfectionists.
They are basically thrifty with money. Rat people are easily angered and love to gossip.
Their ambitions are big, and they are usually very successful.
They are most compatible with people born in the years of the Dragon, Monkey, and Ox.

washington 2006 -Russia

Last year, I had the good fortune to attend a world class stamp exhibition in Washington DC. It was the first world stamp exhibition that I have ever attended at that kind of scale. The place was huge, definitely size of a football field. There were so much to see, so much to do and so little time even though I stayed there for a week. I am sure there will be more to come and that I will attend even more stamp shows in the future, but the first is always more memorable than the rest.

One of my main activities during the show was to visit all the different foreign postal administrations. I think more than 50 countries came, more or less, which was great. You know, the chance of seeing new issues from 50 countries at the same time and at face value is rare. Most of the world class stamp exhibitions only take place once every 10 years for the host country.

I stopped by the Russian postal booth because I have always liked stamps from Russia. Maybe it's because of the funny looking Russian alphabets? or whatever it is .. :) but I think Russian stamps are pretty. I asked the lady behind the booth if she can sell me stamps worth the rate of sending a letter from Russia to the USA, but the lady didn't speak English. After about 10 minutes of sign language and body gestures, I finally bought a set of stamps issued in 2001, beautiful paintings of the city of St. Petersburg. I knew it was about St. Petersburg because the lady kept saying St. Petersburg, haha... I bought the whole set thinking the postage will be enough to mail a letter from Russia to the USA but I was wrong!

A while later when I affixed all the stamps on an envelope and handing it to the lady, at the same time, another lady appeared and she spoke English and she asked me if I needed help, so I handed the letter to her instead. She looked at it and asked if I wanted to have the letter mailed from Russia and I said yes. She was like, oh no, the postage is not enough, and she took a 100 p definitive stamp and put it on the envelope. I asked her how much and she was like, it's ok, no need. I was thrilled. About a month later, I received my envelope back. It was very nice, first self-made letter from Russia. Although, to this day I still have no idea why she put a 100p stamp on the envelope, the 100 seemed very high!

Yoda - May the force be with you.

2 weeks ago at our twice-a-year philatelic stamp show here in New York, a new (or not exactly new) star wars stamp had been issued. Guess who? It was our master Yoda! A funny looking, definitely old, but wise Jedi master in the famous Star Wars series. The stamps were originally issued to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the films "Star Wars" One wonders if this is such a big occasion that it deserves to be shown on stamps? I don't know, the USPS only thinks of money, so I guess it is!

The promotional postcard stamp collectors received from the organizers had a picture of Yoda. I've never created a maxicard before so I thought maybe I can make one out from this postcard since the theme matches so perfectly. It might not be a valid one, but hey, who cares. Here I come Master Yoda!

Can you see him?

Stamps from Thailand

Last week I was very busy yet satisfying because I'd received my order from Thai Post! Continuing my search for postal authorities who use stamps on their philatelic orders, I found Thai Post to be the best among them. The number of stamps used on the covers is incredible. I counted 14 of them and they are complete sets! There is a recent issue of traditional Thai beetle arts, which I like very much. The silhouette of the queen is gold foiled. There were also a set of 4 showing Thai temples. Very nice cover, although I do wish that the envelope is a little smaller.

50th Anniversary of the Space Age

On October 25th, 2007, the United Nations Postal Administration will issue six commemorative stamps in a mini-sheet format in the denominations of 41¢, 90¢, F.s. 1,00, F.s. 1,80, € 0,65 and € 1,15 on the theme “Space for Humanity—50th Anniversary of the Space Age”.

I think this is a really nice set of stamps. UN has not had a set with a space theme for a while, the last one I can think of right now had something to do with Mars? Quite a lot of countries are issuing stamps commemorating this achievement. Such as this cover from Sebastien, sorry Sebastien, I thought it was from Eric...Um..there seems to be a thousand Erics in France who collect stamp. :)

Postmark is quite nice isn't it? I am preparing to mail about 10 covers with the UN stamps tomorrow to collector friends. Honestly, I am sorry to my friends because I have not had time for any philatelic activity for most of this year. I am too busy... :(

I will try to take some pictures, but..I can't guarantee because I might only have 2 hours there then I need to go back to work.

Postal Administrations and Stamped Envelopes

Just finished reading an interesting article by Eric regarding receiving his philatelic order packaged in an envelope with real postage stamps. The order was placed with Guinness Post. As many of you come to realize nowadays, most postal administrations simply stopped using stamps on their philatelic orders, which is a real turn down to us collectors. It is like the farmer who sells apples does not eat his own apple. I remember years ago when I used to pick up my new issue bulletins in a stamped envelopes from Hong Kong Post, and religiously cut out the stamps for my collection. Some of the stamps from that period made a long lasting impression on me, such as the jasmine tea scented stamps, the water-drop shaped stamps, the film stars stamps and all the different varieties of pictorial cancellation . I think Hong Kong post had never realized that the stamps they put on the covers were actually an extended form of advertisement and spoke more about their products than just postage.

Of the postal administrations I know that still use stamps on their envelopes are: UNPA, Portugal, Sweden, Greenland, St. Helena and now Guinness Post. There might be others out there that I didn't know about, so I hope more people will write about their experiences with the postal administrations.

I came to know about the postal administration of St. Helena because of an article written by Jimmy, another prolific blogger about stamps. This really tells you how information has been flowing around when people speaks up about the hobby. He showed a cover that he received from St. Helena when he ordered some stamps from them. I was amazed by the stamps they used on the cover so I ordered some stamps from them to try it out. Indeed my envelope came with stamps on it.

The UNPA also likes to use stamps on their orders. Most of the time, they even apply FD cancellations. Sweden doesn’t really send their stuff with stamps, but on a few occasions, I’ve gotten envelopes from them with stamps. Hope someone will talk about their experience with Sweden.

Greenland uses beautiful stamps, I love the eagle stamps they used on their international mail.

I'll post some pictures when I come back from my trip to Canada!