My stamp album

Once again, this is not exactly unjunking, but creating something out of cheap materials, yet serving the same purpose.  But the one thing that was 'junk' in this project was the gift paper.  Read on.

That is my entire stamp collection. 

My 'Thematics' album.

My three main albums. The other two contains stamps of different countries, including old Indian stamps.

This is known as 'stock album', by philatelists. Album pages I made are of stiff card. 

'Butter paper' - some call it as parchment paper - protects the stamps on both sides of the page.

Close view of the strips of butter paper I stuck to keep stamps. Note the thin line at the bottom where it sticks to the yellow sheet.  I had flour paste as glue and I used to smear a broom stick with it and apply it on the card and then carefully stick butter paper strip to the card.  It was a lot of work, also requiring a lot of patience.  I also had time which was a bonus.  You can see why I had time, in this connected blogpost.  

First I had measured the card size and cut them out. Then I had made the butter paper strips, using a ruler and razor blade.  In those days, we did not have pencil knives like we do now.  It was really tough considering the tools I had then. The card was stuck with strips and folding in behind it the protruding ends of the strips.   This is how the album pages looks from the side.

Then another card prepared similarly was stuck to it back to back. The colourful gift wrapper paper was stuck on the left side after sticking the butter paper sheet on both sides.  This became one 'page'. All my sticking work was done with flour paste. After 30 years they stay good. 

Similarly I prepared a lot of sheets, working over some weeks.  I made these myself as I could not buy the costly ready-made stock books. It worked out cheap for me.  My meagre pocket money sufficed.   Moreover, I had a lot of pages that could be shuffled, because they were put together with a thread that ran through 'double punch' holes.  

This was my first album gifted by a German lady, Hassenbach, who was a friend of Dr.Radha of our opposite house.  The lady was visiting India and on knowing my interest in the hobby, gifted me with a little stock book and sent it through Dr.Radha after a few weeks!  It was very motivational at that time. I think I was just 11 or 12 then.  I tried to make my own album like this, but I could not and ended up doing what you saw above!