ꕤ august mail shipped out + stamp review! 📬✉️

hello! ✩

some housekeeping first, all August mail has been shipped as of September 22. to see when your mail will arrive or if you have other questions, please visit my monthly mail FAQ.

now onto the fun stuff! ( ᵔ ⩊ ᵔ )⋆˙⟡

I buy stamps every month to send out patron mail, so I'm always up to date on the new designs USPS releases. for this batch of mail, I sprang for the new Spongebob and 250 Years of Delivering stamps and wanted to review them! I spend a lot of time with stamps as I apply them to envelopes, so I develop a familiarity with their unique features I might otherwise overlook. I'm also just realizing that stamps are essentially little stickers and as an artist running a monthly sticker club, one could say, I've been known to enjoy stickers.

OHHHHHHHHH let's start with the Spongebob stamps! 🍍🫧 (I hope at least one person got that reference haha)

first off, these are adorable. I love Spongebob and in some ways this show practically raised me and greatly influenced my sense of humor. the art is is wonderful, but something that caught my attention while actually using the stamps was the finish on certain parts of the stamp, like Spongebob's eyes! I noticed I had a harder time smoothing these out and realized the finish is a plastic coating that gives the design a shine. it's rare that stamps have an added finish and if they do it's usually some sort of metallic foil, so this detail was a real surprise. the plastic finish is also on the bubbles of the other designs, but they were too small and tricky for me to properly photograph. xD (not sure I did a good enough job photographing the eyes either haha)

overall, I give these stamps a 3.5/5. I wish the art was more varied and the plastic coating, while fun, actually made the stamps a little hard to use.

up next is the 250 Years of Delivering sheet! lots to love about this sheet, like how the entire page is one giant artwork split up into individual unique stamps. such a cool idea that also worked well when executed.

these stamps are also a unique dimension, a long and tall rectangle that I haven't really come across in my experience of forever stamps, which are usually compact rectangles. you can see it here on an actual envelope and how it takes up a pretty solid chunk of vertical space:

I give these stamps a 5/5. I love that you get 20 unique stamp designs and I like the theme and accompanying artwork. I ❤︎ the USPS! they play a major role in the running of my patreon mail club and I really appreciate all the work they do in helping me send out fun mail rewards to my patrons every month. ^^

that's all for now! hope you enjoyed my little reviews and perhaps I'll do another installment when I get my hands on new designs! we are in the season of holidays, so there's bound to be more interesting stamps in the near future.

have a lovely day!

★ vicki