Winter Fun Stamps 2014

On October 23, 2014, in New York, NY, the U.S. Postal Service® issued the Winter Fun stamps (Forever® First-Class Mail® priced at 49-cents) in four designs, in a pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) booklet of 20 stamps (Item 689800). With four playful designs, Winter Fun stamps celebrate some of the season’s most enjoyable activities: ice-skating, making snow angels, building snowmen, and bird-watching. The art for the ice skaters stamp was painted with acrylic on plywood with a dry brush technique to give the illustration a textured, folk-art feel. The art for the other three stamps was hand-sketched and then digitally manipulated. Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamps using existing illustrations by Janet Atkinson (ice-skating), Jing Jing Tsong (building snowmen and making snow angels), and Christine Roy (bird-watching).

The fondest holiday memories often include the scent of warm ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and molasses used in gingerbread drifting throughout the house. With a little imagination and a lot of patience, gingerbread can be converted into a whimsical house decorated with stiff royal icing and sparkling candies. Building gingerbread houses today can be as simple as buying kits or as complex as constructing small buildings from scratch, giving people of all skill levels the chance to create joyous holiday memories. Baker Teresa Layman created the gingerbread houses specifically for these stamps.  Sally Andersen-Bruce photographed them and art director Derry Noyes designed the stamps.