Custom Puzzle with Slowly stamp images?
An original suggestion was posted on Reddit
...by our reddit user ahhhhhhhchhoooooo in this topic.
Puzzle sets could be by region/theme, a mix of popular stamps, or customized to your personal SLOWLY stamp collection!
Avatars of your penpals could also appear next to the stamps you received from them.
And it is a good idea, as we have many nice stamp designs.
Slowly itself tried doing some merchandise before
...and it did not go too well. They had custom coffee mugs, which had to be shipped, were somewhat heavy and fragile. Eventually they closed that operation.
A pen pal friend did it better – her daughter created a custom printed mug, with mom's favourite Slowly stamps, and gave it to her as a Christmas gift. It was much nicer and more personal than the company article, and no shipping was required – just a trip to a local print shop which offered mug photo printing.
A nice idea?
Similarly, the idea of puzzles with favourite Slowly stamps is a good one, but the company is not likely to take it on. Never fear, there are companies that offer puzzle printing services.
A quick search and I found Vistaprint here in Canada does it. A medium size puzzle has 500 pieces, which is challenging already, and costs 42 Canadian dollars, or about 30 USD. (and a larger 1000 pieces one is not much more at 47 CAD)
Not exactly cheap, but it is a custom, one of a kind item. Other companies closer to people might offer similar services as well.
Large custom puzzle
The 500 piece puzzle is 21 in x 15.5 in, or 53 cm x 39 cm – a nice size. An example template from their catalog is attached.
The 1,000 pieces puzzles are harder to put together but have a larger size – 30.25 x 20.5 inches, or about 76 x 51 cm. And they only cost about 5 CAD more than the 500 pieces ones.
If people created and shared their designs, others could even pick up the finished artwork piece and have it printed at whichever service they chose.
Large stamp images for designs?
We have access to 1,000 pixel images for many (not all) Slowly stamps. These would be ideal for use in creating a high quality design for printing. In our Slowly Stamps Wiki pages, there are direct links to the larger 1,000 pixels images of each. ( Commemoratives, Regional Premium, Regional Stamp Sets)
Example : Lake Titicaca Reserve, Peru's new Premium stamp, is HERE.
(some earlier designs are only available at 320 pixels max).
Design ideas, notes
I would suggest creating a design with stamps sized at at least two different final, printed sizes, which would allow a more dynamic design result. Or go for 3 sizes. You need to work out a mosaic layout so they fit together in a rectangular shape for printing.
The image I am using as banner in this page is from an actual Dogs puzzle set, and I think it is very dynamic – we need that mix of sizes as all Slowly stamps are one single format/proportion.
They also have a lovely AirMail stamps set which illustrates well a dynamic design with different stamp sizes.
Some additional notes:
a. Stamp image sources: my Slowly API tracking spreadsheet has one tab showing the latest 300 stamps and links to their 1,000 pixel images – here.
b. The image server storage path is this : https://static.slowly.app/stamp/ plus the stamp_filename and the .png extension.
c. Stamp filenames can be found for all 2,000 Slowly stamps in this shared spreadsheet. See the filenames in Column B and use it with the format shown above, plus .png for extension.
example :
https://static.slowly.app/stamp/ + pe_titicaca + .png =
https://static.slowly.app/stamp/pe_titicaca.png
d. For people considering a design of their own – maybe we could define 3 modules of stamp size, which allows for some dynamic placement.
Size 1 being the 1000 pixels images; size 2 we shrink it down to 666 pixels, and size 3 is 333 pixels.
Now we can compose them – size 2 + size 3 matches one size 1.
3 times size 3 also equals size 1.
2 size 3 equals dimension for a size 2. Example with these sizes:
(Click on image for larger size version.)
Each stamp has some white space around them, we could trim it down before we start composing puzzle.
Hope someone takes this idea and runs with it... 😎👍
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