...and speaking of stamps- Stamp shadow boxish

January 2018

Time to make: I lost track of time (I was having so much fun)

Original design: Bill Macfarlane

Years ago I saw a wonderful book that had been cut around illustrations in the book and layered together to form a piece of art. I though to myself recently that this same process would make some great slides so I went looking for pictures of Scouting stamps. I enlarged the pictures to the size I wanted the finished slide to be and made several copies of the image. Using an old 1993 Almanac we were throwing away, I pulled out several pages to about a 1/8 inch thickness. I coated the edges these pages with some Mod Podge and left it overnight to dry. The next day I cut out the images of stamps and glued them to the pages. Using a band saw I carefully cut out the images and pages into their shapes.  Once again using Mod Podge, I sealed the outside edges let it dry over night. Now here is the interesting part. With an x-acto knife, I cut away the background of the stamp leaving just the frame and the principle parts. The first stamp above, for example, I cut away everything but the frame, the Explorer Scout (saluting), the Boy Scout, and the Cub Scout.

I did this through all the layers of the paper pages. Once done I coated the inside of the areas I cut with Mod Podge and let it dry over night. Taking another block of the same image, I repeated the process but this time I only left the frame,  Boy Scout and the Cub Scout.

Mod Podge to the inside cut surfaces and set this one aside to dry. The third block left only the frame,  the Cub Scout  and Mod Podge treatment.

The forth block had everything cut away but the frame and more Mod Podge.

I also took this opportunity to  Mod Podge around the part I removed to give me a solid piece to cut out the Scout symbol. I cut half the Scout symbol out and then Mod Podged.

When dry I cut the other side of the symbol and applied Mod Podge to this side.

 The next day, I painted the inside edges of each with some black paint. When the the paint was dry,  I started with the another block that had nothing cut from it and glued the first block to it using the Scouts and frame as my guide to alignment. For the third layer, I glued the second block, the one with only the Boy Scout and the Cub Scout, to the first and bottom block. The forth layer was the Cub Scout block and the final layer was the frame block. When the glue dried I trued up the sides and the painted the sides. To finish the slide I glued a loop to the back and gave the slide a couple of coats of poly.

I enjoyed making the US Boy Scouts Stamps and even the stamp of the first and only Chief Citizen Scout.

***NOTE: Editorial comment ahead ***

Some might notice I have not include the 2010 Scouting stamp.

 I don't consider the stamp to be a representation of the Boy Scouts of America.

Slide(s) of the month - Stamps

January 2018

Time to make: 1 hour

 Boys Life "Slide of the Month"

"Button 'N' Things" May 1959, page 58
Kenneth Damm

"Postage Stamp" July 1987, page 56
Robert Schleicher

"Stamp" May 1978, page 67

Wayne Mason



When I was a Scout, Stamp Collecting Merit Badge was a very popular merit badge to earn during the cold days and nights of winter. Now when you combine two hobbies, (a philatelsideist?), the results can be stunning. 

The first stamp, a 1929 1 cent Ben Franklin, is mounted on a coat button. The loop is a coat hanger which the ends are glued into the holes of the button. But more on this slide later...

 The middle slide is made using wooden knob with  a 3/4 inch eye screw, to form the loop, screwed into the knobb.  The stamp is a 1939 "50th Anniversary of Statehood" for Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota 

The last stamp is mounted on a thin piece of 1/8 inch painted plywood with a wooden loop glued to the back. When is a stamp not a stamp? Well when I was researching this stamp I discovered the Republik Maluku Seltan I have is a private issue stamp with no postal value. Henry Stolow, a stamp dealer in New York, Munich and Berlin, had many stamps of "doubtful validity" created with deliberate printing errors and overprints. In addition he also involved in creating many fake stamps for the Indonesian Maluku Islands as an independent nation.

 Originally, the "Buttons 'N' Things" slide showed a picture of the coat button with macaroni letters spelling out

Pack 3
Den 2

Well, I'm out of macaroni letters but have a couple of other items mentioned in the article which could be mounted on coat buttons. Besides a stamp, a small radio tube and electronic parts were also mentioned as something interesting for a slide. I decided to mount a nixie tube