I also collected stamps as a child, poring over books to find out what each stamp was, identifying the country it came from and then looking in the Atlas my paternal granny had given me to find out where in the world some of the countries were. I would buy a bag of stamps, soak them from their envelopes if needed, then put the stamps in a ring binder, in country, then year, order. My original collection was thrown out by my 1st (ex-) husband - he had a habit of declaring clearouts and then thrown out my stuff, but none of his - I wrote a poem about that http://ajewelshiningthrough.blogspot.com/2009/06/lets-have-clearout.html ;) I still collect stamps from correspondence, from friends and family - so mostly my stamps are from the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada and Australia - but I don't catalogue them anymore: I have them in a plastic box and use the spares for embellishments. The collage was made mostly with real stamps, some of which I trimmed to fit the spaces.
Credit:
Background paper (mostly covered over with stamps but just peeking through in places) - Me and My Ideas, Vintage Scrappy Chic, Silver grey diamond patterned Collage Paper Collection
Tag - K & Co, Cut n Paste assorted tag sheet
"Love" and "Imagine" stamps - Pebbles inc. Real Life, Adhesive Die Cut Stamps, Random
Other stamps - from my spares stamp collection
