How My Birds Ended Up on Stamps – From the EUROPA Competition to the Printing Press
In 2019 something quite special happened: PostNL, the Royal Dutch Post, released a series of both national and international stamps featuring my bird illustrations. It had always been a dream of mine to illustrate postage stamps – and in this project, that dream came true. It beautifully combined my love for birds, for painting, and my daily routine at the time. I was running my webshop and personally shipping out art prints – both within the Netherlands and abroad – using real stamps for every order. For years I had been surrounded by stamps, always sticking them on one by one as part of my daily routine. This project brought those worlds together in the most joyful way.
Each year, PostEurop – the association of European postal organizations – holds the EUROPA Stamp Best Design Competition. The theme that year was national birds, and for the Netherlands, two species were selected: the European goldfinch (de Putter) and the Bohemian waxwing (de Pestvogel). I loved capturing them in watercolor. An interview in Dutch with me and designer Yvonne Warmendam can be found here.
In addition to the EUROPA series, PostNL also launched a national stamp collection titled Tuinvogels in Nederland (Dutch Garden Birds), featuring six beloved birds commonly seen in our gardens and parks. It felt both familiar and meaningful – these are the birds I often hear first thing in the morning (except for the goldcrest, as I shared in this blog post).
One of the highlights of the project was the playful addition of the Cee app. Released on April 23rd, it allowed you to scan each of the international stamps and hear the song of the bird depicted. A small but magical moment of connection with nature, through something as ordinary – and extraordinary – as a postage stamp.
And there was more: I was invited to witness the official printing of the stamps at Royal Johan Enschedé, one of the world’s oldest and most renowned security printers. It was fascinating to see the production process – from first drafts and precision checks to enormous sheets of perfectly printed stamps. Designer Yvonne of Orange licensing and I even joined in the final quality check, a symbolic gesture that marked the end of this special journey.
Working on these stamps gave me the chance to share my illustrations with a much wider audience – not just through exhibitions and prints, but through something people actually use in everyday life. It's a small but special way of letting my art travel the world, one envelope at a time.
Update 2020:
Although my stamps didn’t win the EUROPA Stamp Best Design Competition, the series was still very well received. In 2020, readers of Collect magazine voted for the most beautiful stamps of 2019, and the Garden Birds in the Netherlands sheet came in second place. A wonderful compliment!
