Thingamababy

A few months after Little Miss was born last year, we slapped her face on a postage stamp and sent thank-you notes to folks who gave gifts to the baby. OK, as you can see, it’s an odd photo. I wanted something different than the standard smiling baby. I wanted odd.

Stamps.com finished its photo stamp trial program last year as scheduled, but not without a little controversy. The Smoking Gun thought it would be nifty to order a bunch of stamps featuring controversial subjects. I like The Smoking Gun, but I hate people who destroy things just to show that they are destructible. For many months it looked like the stamp program would not return, but this summer it did!

[Update: Stamps.com's photo stamps are back online.]

Setting up a photo stamp is easy. You upload an image, crop it and fiddle with the colors through a web interface, then you just indicate what and how many stamps you want to buy. There are lots of restrictions on what types of photos you cannot use, but your baby is not one of them.

The stamps cost more than regular ones, so they’re primarily useful for special occasions.

I was surprised at how vibrant my stamps turned out, and how large they were (1.75″x1.25″). The stinker came when I visited my parent’s house and saw Little Miss’ face muddied by the postal cancellation mark that goes on all delivered mail.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2005Miscellaneous