World Stamp Expo Fun Times!

 

So this blogging game has gotten away from me recently, and as a result there is a bit of catching up to do. About a month ago I was very excited to attend the World Stamp Expo, which was being held in my hometown of Melbourne. The WORLD STAMP EXPO!

The Expo was held at the Royal Exhibition Building, a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage listed building located in the Carlton Gardens. I dragged my dutiful boyfriend along, who patiently accompanied through the myriad stalls from various postal authorities from around the globe. I also dragged my friend Grant along - but he chose to lie in the sun for a couple of hours in the Gardens instead. Each to their own (but you missed out on some fun, Grant!).

As you could well imagine, I made a few purchases over the course of the day. My little bag was full (and my bank account empty) by the end of it. I got a souvenir minisheet to add to my royal kitsch collection, embossed with the Expo logo on it.  And I just couldn't help myself, also adding to my royal collection I got a Wills and Kate FDC.

Moving away from my tacky fascination with royals, I also indulged my love of maps, and found this amazingly beautiful minisheet from Greenland. What a find!

I also visited Deutsche Post, and purchased this lovely minisheet as it features both a map element and the Antarctic, and I love the Antarctic. The combinations of boats and ice always make for beautiful images. Would you agree?

I also found these awesome Indonesian stamps, which I saw when I visited there last year, but resisted buying at the time due to budgetary constraints.

The stamps depict traditional fabric designs from around Indonesia. They are quite lovely, in my opinion.

Anyhow that is a sample of my many purchases from the World Stamp Expo 2013.  It was a very fun day out for a big stamp nerd like me.

And now this stamp nerd is signing off for the time being. I am about to head to Turkey for six and a half weeks! I am very excited and will be working on a Roman archaeological site on the south coast. It is an absolute dream come true and I can't wait to be archaeologising on the other side of the world. So I will try and post to this blog (probably fairly irregularly) over the coming few weeks, but the posts will be archaeologic rather than philatelic in nature. But watch this space!

Royal Kitsch Birthday Giveaway Results

Good evening lovely blog-readers.

Just a quick update regarding my recent giveaway. I just used random.org to work out the winner...

AND THE WINNER IS...

(drumroll please)

LAURA L.

Thank you to the five wonderful people who entered the competition. I so appreciate your readership and comments!

I will be posting out to Laura the little "Royal Kitsch" pack I have put together, containing five envelopes, some royal stamps for fun crafting and the Prince Charlie and Lady Di stamp set.  I hope you enjoy them Laura!

Birthday Giveaway Time !

This week marks the beginning of my 33rd year of being. I feel that is something of an occasion, and just for the heck of it, I am going to try something radical and new...

I am going to do a giveaway!!

Yay!

Happy Birthday to my lovely blog readers.

As a little token of my appreciation for your continued support, I thought I would cook up a little tasty treat. And because it is my birthday, and because I love Royal Kitsch, that is what I have chosen for the theme.

The task is simple - leave a comment to enter (compulsory), and follow along on bloglovin or google friend connect for a bonus entry. And if you are already a follower - then no problemo, leave a comment and you will receive two entries.

The lucky prize winner will receive:

1) Charlie and Lady Di stamp pack (see above).

2) Five hand made envelopes featuring royals taken from vintage books purchased last year (see below).

3) A bundle of QEII stamps - use them as seals on the envelopes, as decorations, turn them into gift tags, make mini royal bunting from them... oh goodness, the options are endless. Just enjoy them!

I am going to draw the winner using random.org, and the competition will be open for 10 days.

Thanks for playing along. All the best from I heart post headquarters,

xx Helen

UPDATE: The winner has now been announced here: and it is Laura L. ... not because she was the first person to comment, but because that is who random.org chose! Thanks to all for participating!

Guest Collection: Phillipe's Tongan Stamps

Hello friends, fellow stamp enthusiasts, nerds and hipsters...
This week here on iheartpost we have an exciting new development: I'm featuring a guest collection!

Spot the map stamp! :)

Phillipe, the 9 year old son of my work friend Meredith, collects stamps. And because he is a total champion, he was good enough to let his Mum bring them in to work for show and tell. (I love show and tell).

Click on any image for a better view!

As you can see, Phillipe has a fantastic collection of minisheets from Tonga. Aren't they pretty? Explorers, space and sheep. And a little bit of royal kitsch, just to make me especially happy:

It is possible that the King of Tonga one could be my favourite of all.

As well as the issues from the Kingdom of Tonga, one of the Tongan islands, Niuafo'ou, issues its own stamps.

Niuafo'ou was once known as "Tin Can Island" and it still issues its own stamps as a historic throwback (ahem) to when the mail delivery was thrown overboard from boats in tin cans, and bobbed to shore on the current! Or so Meredith tells me (and I believe her). Thankfully, their mail now arrives slightly less sodden, in a different sort of tin can (one with wings):

Thank-you, thank-you Phillipe for sharing these brightly coloured philatelic pieces of an island paradise with us!

In other iheartpost news... I am heading off on a little sojourn to Indonesia for the next couple of weeks. I am skipping the last two weeks of winter (I am SO OVER winter) and searching out some beach/sun/adventure etc. So, until September peeps... keep it real. Nerd out.

The Queen, Clunes and a Coronation Collection

This weekend my friend Jaz and I took a road trip to a small town in the Central Victorian goldfields district to check out the Clunes Booktown bookfair, which proved to be a very fun day out for a nerd like me. There was a veritable bonanza of second-hand books on offer, in the setting of a beautiful old town that has a streetscape barely changed since the gold-rush era. Joy.

I am not sure whether it was because I wrote about Royal Kitsch last week, and it was therefore in the forefront of my mind, or whether it was because I knew I wanted to share some coronation first day covers with you, my lovely blog readers; but either way, somehow I came home from Clunes with not one, or even two, but three books on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Whoops.

The end papers of the books are my favourite thing! They are so decorative! And one of them is even a map! There is so much to get excited about when the books are "colourgravure publications". These books are a techni-colour dream!

I must admit that I purchased many more items other than these coronation books (the temptations were great), and although these books aren't strictly speaking 'post', I love them and couldn't resist sharing them.  I do love a bit of "show and tell". And it was such a fantastic day, that I wanted to share something of that experience too. Next year I think we might have to spend the whole weekend at Clunes Booktown - one day wasn't enough.

And now to the post connection. The weekend before last Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Isobel gave me some more of Pa Bert's first day covers. Some of the most stand-out are the Qantas FDCs celebrating the Queen's Coronation. I now have eight of them - all from different colonies.

The details on these FDCs are so exquisite, that this blog doesn't do them justice. I think the design has been letter-pressed and the texture and feel of the old paper and print is special. Not to mention, the regal gold and red is just lovely.

The FDC from New Zealand has a really fantastic postmark on the front,  while the issue from Ceylon has all the stamps on the reverse of the envelope.

The Malayan FDC is beautiful, and covered with stamps on the front and back:

All of the FDCs are sealed, but some of them feel like they have cardboard in them - and a couple of them might have a pamphlet in them. But I am too afraid to open them to find out!

So somehow, now I have a collection of coronation books as well as a collection of coronation first day covers, and a collection of coronation stamps. Is there a word for a collection of collections?

Royal kitsch

Pieta, William and Clancy, Feb 2003

Eleanor Ferret (my youngest sister) gave me the above birthday card a couple of weeks ago and it is the inspiration for this post. She knows me very well, because this is about the best birthday card ever. So cheesy, so kitsch, so wrong - yet so right.

I have been a fan of Wills since I bought a calendar featuring ridiculous (read: very serious) portrait shots of him, circa 2002. It was total hipster irony before hipsters were even hipsters, let alone before they were ironic.

Ted, Wills and Sandy dining
al fresco under the hills hoist in
the backyard of 36B

That year Wills attended a party with me - it was a dress up party and you had to go as what you wanted to be in the future. I went as HRH Helen, with Wills (plucked from my calendar) as my beau.

He was then added to our dinner invite list - and these are a couple of photos of him enjoying a party in the good-old-days of "36B": our student share-house in Carnegie. The thoughtful person who hung William out to dry also put up a sign: "I shall NEVER marry a lady by the name of HELEN". At least my funny friends thought I was a lady. But how about that - they were right about him not marrying one.

In actual fact, my love of royal kitsch reaches beyond my student days - well beyond.

These Will stamps from my Mum and are from the same era as the calendar

I still remember that in my baby album there was a 50c commemorative coin from Charlie and Di's engagement. It always fascinated me when I was younger and flicking through the album. That little piece of royal kitsch was gifted to me as a baby just because the royal couple happened to marry in the year I was born - and it has had a lasting impact.

So, of course, within my stamp collection, which reflects so much about my life, there is a sub-section for royal kitsch.  But it is not just William who captures my imagination - the whole fairy tale turned nightmare of Charles and Diana mesmerises me - just like a train wreck might. What strange lives these royals must lead. And at this point I should probably disclose that I am a republican. So - see - this royal kitsch thing is 50% hipster irony, 50% actual delight.

The British stamp pack for Charlie and Di's Royal Wedding is brilliant. The photos are gorgeous. Diana is beautiful and oh, so young. This is the fairy tale stage. (And I love a fairy tale.)

The back of the stamp pack half opened out. And Diana in a sailor suit! Ah! The 80s!

The Australian stamp pack celebrating the wedding is a tad boring by comparison:

My collection is incomplete (aren't all collections); I still need to get the Wills and Kate stamp from their actual wedding. Although that still might be on my shopping list, very importantly I do have the William and Katherine paper dolls set, so I can cut out costumes and dress up the royal pair anytime I want. Ah - the simple pleasures in life!