I recently received a commission with just a few basic guidelines but leaving the final design to me! The recipient is a lady who loves designs featuring circles and also loves bright colours including red and orange. I had fun with my compass playing around with circles of various sizes and then choosing stamps to fit my colour scheme! Remembering the Cosmati mosaic floors I'd seen in ancient churches in Rome, I found my holiday photos and printed out examples from those in San Giovanni Laterano, Santa Maria Cosmedin and Santa Maria in Trastevere.
Stamps lend themselves to this type of mosaic pattern and I was soon enjoying putting together the design using stamps from Belgium, France, Spain in various shades of red and orange, as well as British stamps for the grey marble - postal labels which I have also found to be useful in creating the sails on one of my recent ships! It's great to be able to find another use for this type of stamp which most people will just discard. Not me of course!
