Sunday Stamps: Lighthouses

This Sunday Stamps theme is 'Lighthouses'. Such a nice and interesting theme, which of course has been theme to Sunday Stamps before.

A beautiful maxicard which I received since then, from Australia, you can see in my blog post of the 11th of November 2015.

Recently, Dutch PostNL has issued some stamps showing lighthouses. This one is from the new Postcrossing stamp sheet, the lighthouse of Marken:




And this is a stamp sheet, dedicated to five fisherman's towns. Two of them, the stamps of Urk and Scheveningen, show lighthouses, too:



See more great lighthouse stamps on the Sunday Stamps' blog and via the links mentioned below the blog post.

In: from the United Kingdom

John sent me this postcard, showing the Billericay Windmill in Essex.
The postcard traveled in only 2 days, from the United Kingdom to the Netherlands! And was accompanied by a special stamp on the backside:



Thank you very much, John! Thank you also for the other postcards, very much appreciated! I'll post the other cards later, but for now I couldn't wait to share this shaped bat stamp!

Sunday Stamps: Butterflies

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Butterflies or moths'.

The first butterfly stamps which come into mind are from a pretty butterfly serie, issued by Correos in Spain. This is one of them, issued in 2011:



A stamp which seems to be 'common', and which shows one of my favourite butterflies (even though I've never seen this 'common swallowtail' in real), is this Belgian one:



In the United Kingdom, Royal Mail has issued butterfly stamps as well, of which I received this one:



These 'citrus swallowtails' arrived from South Africa:



This year Dutch PostNL issues several stamp sheets in collaboration with the 'Ouderenfonds', a charity fund, founded to help elder people.
By the way, on their website - alas in Dutch only - the Ouderenfonds mentions several projects, among them a 'send a card to a lonely elder person' project, and I think the project website's name very suitable: 'no facebook'. I think it a nice initiative, and fortunately there are similar projects in other countries, too (a quick search via google learn me about, among others, this one, and this, and this, and of course we can look around in our neighbourhood or faraway family, I think there are many people to whom a real written card will bring a smile - and see, how coincidentally, this month the Mail a Smile project's theme happens to be 'Butterfly'!).

Regarding the stamp sheets, among them is a serie of four, showing both butterflies and flowers, in relation to the four seasons. One stamp of the spring sheet has been posted some Sundays ago. Above the Crocus stamp there was/is a butterfly, and also one butterfly flew in the stamp sheet edge:



One other is a serie of butterfly stamp sheets, this is one of them:



The illustrations of these stamp sheets have been created by Janneke Brinkman-Salentijn.

By the way, a year ago Dutch post already has issued a serie of four nice stamp sheets showing butterflies, be it photos instead of drawings, but also in relation to the four seasons. You can see them at PostNL's collector's shop website.

A special manner to picture butterflies is shown on this stamp sheet: butterfly silhouets. It is a sheet from the serie 'Mooi Nederland' ('beautiful Netherlands'), dedicated to the city of Amersfoort.
I was wondering what butterflies have to do with this particular city, and the only information I found is that there has been constructed a 'butterfly way' throughout the city, with butterfly friendly flowers planted in several locations.



If you look close you can see a blue butterfly on the stamps themselves.

See more colourful and beautiful butterfly stamps at Sunday Stamps.

In: from Morocco

More than two months time it took for them to arrive, but they did!
Totally intact, two postcards from Eva, cancelled the 11th of March, and delivered in my mailbox today, 21st of May!

The card above is from Volubilis, an ancient city, close to the present city of Meknes. The city expanded and became important in the Roman time, 2nd-3rd century, and these mosaic floors are remains of that era. See how modern (cartoonish even) the picture top left is!



The other postcard shows 'Lharira classique', classic harira soup from Fassia (Fez). On the back side there is the recipe. As a soup lover I really should have a try to make it at home one day :-)



The stamps have been issued in 2015, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 'Marche Verte', the 'Green March'.



Thank you very much, moltes gràcies, Eva!

Sunday Stamps: Flowers

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'flowers'.
I don't know any country that hasn't issued flower stamps, do you?
So there is a bunch to choose from. Many beautiful colourful pictures of flowers on stamps you can find on/via today's Sunday Stamps blog. I love to add some more stamps here.

I'll start with a famous flower pot plant. It's a cyclamen, and the stamp has been issued by Japanese Mail:



From Singapore I received this stamp, issued in 2011 for the 20th World Orchid Conference.



Here the stamp is again, now accompanied by a stamp from 2007, showing an other flower, the Plumeria, also known as Frangipani:



A postage machine stamp (I think, because of the missing typical stamp edges), also from Singapore, shows flowers (also the orchid!) in front of some sights, among them the Merlion):



Flowers are colourful creations, however these black and white stamps from the USA show that there's beauty not only in colours but also in the shapes:



From Asia via America to Europe.
This Dutch stamp is part of the recently issued Postcrossing stamp sheet. The sheets shows various typical Dutch sights. The bulb flower fields are one of these:



In 2007 Dutch Post (then names TNT Post) issied this ten flower stamps sheet. If you look well, you can see some dark tiny spots in the middle of each stamp. Those are flower seeds, and in real you can see some small plastic circle sticked above it, so the seeds stay in their place.



Maybe you can see the seeds better in this detail below.
The text on bottom says that these stamps are meant for national use. However I would like to send this sheet as a 'thank you' to some mail artist in the US who has sent me flower artistamps and even also flower seeds, pressed into the cardboard of a postcard. I'm hesitating to send out, and to have grow the received seeds, being not sure if it is a good idea to have those postcard's seeds come out here in Europe and to spread the Dutch flower seeds to America, because you never know if one of these will turn out to be a harmful invasive species (having in mind, for example from the animals world, the harlequin ladybird, who has been introduced in our country in 2004, and who now is pushing aside the ladybird species I used to admire from childhood, and who I hardly see anymore nowadays, the seven-spot ladybird.)



I'll finish my contribution of today with an other famous pot flower plant, the Geranium (or is it Pelargonium?).



As said, see more colourful stamps on flowers at/via today's Sunday Stamps.

In: from Taiwan

Some countries do issue not only a variety of postage stamps, but also a variety of beautiful pictural postmarks. Taiwan is one of these countries. And Komimi from Taiwan was so kind to send me these two postmarks as a surprise within other mail. I love mail related postmarks, fortunately these are! Showing mail transport, a mailbox and a mail logo.



Komimi also made me happy with this postcard, designed by herself:



And on the back side there were these wonderful Chinese New Year stamps, from the Year of the Monkey, including a present monkey postmark, the Year of the Goat and the Year of the Horse.



THank you very much, Komimi!

Sunday Stamps: People at work

Yesterday was First of May and yesterday was a Sunday. So this Sunday Stamps theme is 'People at work'.

Both Brazil and Singapore have issued stamps in honour to trade / craft, and I happened to have received these two stamps, both showing a shoemaker at work:



A 'wooden shoe' maker can be seen on the stamp on the right on the following sheet.
Dutch post issues limited edition 'post sets' at a regular base, containing three postcards and one (cancelled) stamp sheet.
The pictures on this sheet have been made by the late illustrator / artist Rien Poortvliet. Many know him for his creation of David the Gnome (how coincidentally, Eva: thank you for your recent mail!), but I am more familiar with his other works: nature, farmer's life, life in the past.
For instance also these peopple at work, in former times.
Of course the mailman still is here and might be a favourite of many of us!



On the left, outside the stamps themselves, you can see an other trade, which not has to do with the human feet but with the horse's feet: the shoeing smith, also at work.

Which brings me to the last stamp for today. This stamp from the United Kingdom shows two hard working horses, and if you look close you can see also one person, 'following' these working horses:



See more great stamps to this subject on Sunday Stamps and via the links mentioned below the blog post.