Best Wishes to Everyone

Happy New Year!

Peace on Earth

Happy New Year

Bonne Année

Meilleurs Vœux

Meilleurs Voeux

This is a special card. The illustration was made by Michel Trani for a stamp design contest, held in 1998, with the occasion of the "Year of the Postman". Inside, there is a little book with a lot of designs.

Sent by Phillip (the USA), Catherine (France), Sandrine (France), Fabienne (France) and Paul (Australia).

Oz Jigsaw

I received this original postcard in four parts (a, b, c and d).

Phillip (the USA) posted one piece of this jigsaw every day, at the end of 2015. Of course, they did not arrived in the right order. The second part arrived on 13 January. The rest of the postcards arrive together two days later. In the links above you can see every part and the postmarks.

I love this kind of jigsaw experiments!

Letters and Numbers on Stamps

Today's theme for Sunday Stamps - II is Words and/or Numbers (no pictures). I was waiting it for show this stamp!:

It was issued by Correos on January 3, 2014, on the occasion of the 3rd Centenary of the Real Academia Española (='Royal Spanish Academy'), the official institution responsible for overseeing the Spanish language. I know the rule was no pictures, and you can see three dictionaries on the stamp. But, if you look carefully at the stamp, you can see they are used to mean the "III". And there is a dictionary definition on the background (lengua = 'language').

Not that I am very fond of this institution. But, in an ideal world, they should be more stamps dedicated to dictionaries...

And what about numbers? There are not so many stamps depicting just numbers, apart from basic series like these (from the Netherlands):

Library Mail Art

-I can't stop reading!
-I have the same problem!

Sent to Lackman Library (the USA). How could I resist a mail art call about libraries and books?

See the pop-up book. It belongs of course to a library:

It is written in Arabic and contains also music and butterflies...

The envelope was made of an old magazine:

But I am afraid it has never reached its destination... :(

Disello

I am sorry: this is a post for residents in Spain.

Correos (Spanish postal service) had launched a contest: you have to design a stamp and send it to the platform. The winner will enjoy a trip to the Salon Philatelique d´Automne de Paris! And the most important: (s)he will see the design on a real stamp in 2015!

Here the conditions to participate.

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Another interesting initiative of Correos: Libros que llegarán muy lejos (again, just for residents in Spain).

De laatste liefdesbrief

De laatste liefdesbrief (The Last Letter From Your Lover), by Jojo Moyes, is not only a book about letters... but it can also be sent by mail. At least, its first pages. I have got it from my friend Heleen (the Netherlands).

Inside you can read some letters. I mean: you can if you can read in Dutch (a little problem, you see...).