08 Nov How to Create a Paper Sloyd Stamp Book

Anyone need a paper sloyd stamp book? We are moving into our second year of paper sloyd creations from the book Paper Sloyd for Primary Grades by Ednah Anne Rich, and today we will be creating a stamp book. Now, I’m gong to be perfectly honest – we have no use for a stamp book. We don’t use stamps very often, so we just tuck them away in my desk drawer until we need to use them. But they were apparently very popular in the early 1900s, when Paper Sloyd for Primary Grades was written!

Stamp books first appeared in 1884, when Albert W. Cooke of Boston obtained a patent for a “Book for Holding Stamps.”  This stamp book was intended to be small enough to fit into a vest pocket, and it contained pages of wax paper. You would slip your stamps between the wax paper pages to prevent the stamps from sticking to each other or to the paper. The post office got on board with the idea in 1900 and began selling their own. We still buy books of stamps today, but they’re not nearly as cute as the one we are going to make!

Materials Needed

We are moving away from using paper and scissors, and are getting into using an Exacto knife and a cutting mat. This is definitively a different skill level and will initially require parent supervision and guidance. The paper we are using is also getting thicker. In older books, it is typically referred to as cardboard, but I believe we would now refer to the thickness as cardstock or bristol board.

• A cutting mat
• An Exacto knife
• A piece of good quality cardstock
• A decorative piece of scrapbook paper (optional)
• A pencil
• A pair of scissors
• A ruler
• Parchment paper or wax paper

Once you’ve gathered your materials, it’s time to sit down and create! Here’s our step-by-step video on how to create a paper sloyd stamp book

The Result

The result is a tiny little foldable stamp book that perfectly holds our stamps. Isn’t fun to see how folks back in the early 1900s were DIYers too? Stamp books cost an extra cent, when bought from the post office. So instead of paying extra, people got creative and made their own!

I hope you are following along, learning paper sloyd with us! We are creating videos of each model that we make, and you will find them all on our Happy Handicraft channel on YouTube. You can also find the entire compilation of the first year of paper sloyd models and videos at A Practical Guide to Your First Year of Paper Sloyd.