Show Us Your Custom Pages...not Steiner Or Pre Produced

Here are a few of mine. Click to enlarge. To see more of my pages, see this thread.

Amazing pages and stamps PostmasterGS - I learnt a lot reading them. Thanks for sharing

Here's a couple of pages from the collection which my father gave to me quite some time ago. He created these pages - and many others like them - in the 1940s and 1950s.

The white page is on heavy cartridge paper. To make the pages sit better in an open album, Dad cut two vertical slits down the page, close the hinge side of the album and then stuck the whole thing back together with brown tape.




I have started to design pages from my own albums and will post images soon.

PostmasterGS.
I looked and could not find where you have ever mentioned how you print your pages. Do you use a laser of ink jet printer?
Don

itma - your Dad's pages are to most of today's computer-generated stuff as the Grand Canyon is to the crack in your sitting-room wall, as they say. Fabulous.

Thanks, Geoff, for your very kind words. His advantage, of course, was that he was a draughtsman by training.

itma- that explains the fine line drawings of the varieties in circles - superb

Don,

I use an HP CP5225dn large format color laser printer. I bought it many years ago to print Scaubek-sized pages, before I switched to 8.5x11.

PostmasterGS,

I figured so. You are a person who has tackled the task of designing your own pages the correct way and setting the standard for the rest of us.
You use the right application, InDesign. You use great paper and the best printing method. And of course your designs are simply outstanding.

For this I am awarding you the following...


I thank you for demonstrating to us just how nice self-printed pages can be, great job!
Don

They qualify as literature.

Thanks, Don! Is there a cash prize with that trophy?!?

I'm a little lucky in that I have a good combination for page building -- being good with computers, being able to throw money at the problem (InDesign, Photoshop, commercial printer, etc.), and being a little OCD.

I've had my share of false starts over the years. I started with Scott pages, then Lighthouse, then Schaubek, before deciding to build my own. I tried PowerPoint, Publisher, and Scribus before going all-in with InDesign.

I thoroughly enjoy seeing others discovering the benefit of making their own pages. It opens collecting up when you have the ability to tell a story in addition to just sticking stamps in a spot.

PostmasterGS...WOW! Just how long does it take you to finish a page like that?

The superb PostmasterGS pages blur the line between an album page and an exhibit page, which is a good thing. Those of us doing self-designed album pages can learn a lot from texts on exhibiting, and exhibits of others.

cj, when I first saw postmaster's pages, my first thought was exhibition material. I got my first look at exhibition material/pages, etc, last weekend at Ameristamp in Birmingham, Alabama, and I would certainly say that postmaster's is comparable. Really an unbelievable and quality job by postmaster.

It varies a good bit. If it's a straightforward page with just stamps (like the German East Africa Yacht Issues above), maybe 10-15 minutes to design the page, plus another 10-15 minutes to mount the stamps. I have a macro set-up in InDesign that allows me to enter the stamp size and have it autogenerate the correct size box, which really speeds up the process.

For pages that have photos, it can take a little longer because I sometimes have to find a good photo, then do some Photoshop work to clean-up the photos.

For those that have excerpted cancels or cachets (like the Zeppelin postcard above), it can take hours of Photoshop work to get a good, clean copy of the cancel off of some covers/postcards. Many of those pages take several hours to construct.