Black minus red is blue and yellow

Today's Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Dark, colour or theme'. When I saw this theme announced last Sunday, I immediately had an atmospheric, nice dark / sunset stamp in mind. Not knowing what would happen later this week.
Thursday morning, 24 February, a horrible news shook the world. How can one man even think of attacking a country, and then let his bad saddening thoughts come true by letting the army of his country invade the neighbouring country...

Thanks to our stamp hobby on instagram I've learned to know kind and thoughtful people from both countries. While the woman in RU feels guilty and sad and supports the UA people, the UA woman is hiding in shelter due to the bombing...

Both you, dear visitor, and I know how real mail can connect real people in a positive way, and I wished that this agressive president would have been sending postcards and drink tea and make music with the neighbours instead of causing pain and loss by starting a bad, sad war.

Instead of the dark sunset stamp I originally had in mind, I chose two specific bright colours for today. The connection with the theme, dark/black: Painters know that the three primary colours together make black (or at least a dark grey).
So if we pull the red out of this black, the remaining colours form the bright colours of the flag of the country we are supporting in these hard times.
And I chose these stamps (coincidentally from other countries) to have these Blue and Yellow always keep on shining bright.

Last but not least, I dont know if KR Post did issue this yellow umbrella stamp intentionally to support the people in HK, but anyhow I think these people, whose freedom has been taken away by an other mighty country, deserve attention and support, too.

Let us not forget that many other countries have been invaded and even stolen by other countries (also in 'our' past via colonialism) and still today many more people in many countries suffer from war and agression.
Hopefully peace will gain victory all over the world very, very soon.

See more stamps on the theme, supporting Ukraine and peace, at - and in the comments to - today's Sunday Stamps post.

Sunday Stamps: Mountains

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Mountains'.

In the Netherlands there aren't real mountains (the highest one is a 322 meters high hill) but fortunately elsewhere in the world there are beautiful ones.
The following mountains all happen to be covered with snow.

For instance the famous mount Olympus in Greece. As a child I loved to read mythology stories, and according to these, the ancient Greek gods and goddesses had their home on this mountain:



(See more Greek mountains on Joy's blog post of today.)

A snowy mountain in Norway:



Australian Alp in Victoria, Australia:



And simply but beautifully designed Austrian Alps from Austria:



See more beautiful mountains on beautiful stamps at and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: Green

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Green'.

The first stamp I'd like to share with you I don't own myself. Thanks to the internet I found an image and I am happy to show it today, because it is such a matching stamp!
Today not only is a 'green' themed Sunday Stamps day, but today also is the start of the Persian New Year: Now ruz or Norooz.
For this celebration, people arrange 'haft seen', a tabletop with 7 items which start with the letter 's'. One of the items is Sabzi, which literally means both 'green' and 'vegetable'.
This stamp shows Sabzi: the green sprouts of, for example, wheat or lentils, bound together by a red ribbon.



(I think the tulip is optional, I have never seen it in real/on pictures so far.)

For anyone who is celebrating this New Year: Happy Norooz!


I happened to have joined a chaincard project themed 'green' via Instagram recently.
The postcard started its journey in the Netherlands and after a short stop in Taiwan (ROC), Japan and Italy it returned with these stamps containing the colour green:



Austria issued this stamp for the 20th anniversary of the Alps Adriatic Philately:



Much green you can see in this stamp - one of my favourites - from Japan:



'Green' of course also has to do with environment friendly issues.

These environment friendly themed stamps are from Spain:



The following five are from a 'green' ('groen', environment friendly) ten stamp sheet from the Netherlands:



'Het nieuwe werken, groene winst' means 'the new way of working, green (environmental) profit'. The laptop represents working-at-home, in order to decrease car use and traffic.

Some of the other stamps, of which the one top right says 'groene post, een goed bericht', which mean 'green mail, a good (positive) message':



More about this stamp serie (in Dutch, but I think the non-Dutch speakers will enjoy the pictures, too) on this site and about the design process by Gesina Roters on this site.
Other 'Green' stamps (among them the 'denk groen', 'think green', stamp sheet you can find on this site.

See more stamps on the theme 'Green' on the Sunday Stamps blog and the links under the blog post.