Hello ! Yesterday I saw my neighboor and in the conversation we had I spoke about the hobby I started and I show her my album with stamps… she liked a lot the idea and on the next day she borrow me some of her postcards so I can take the stamp for me (thanks to the tip that I found about taking away a stamp from a postcard without making a mess)… here I show what she gave me :
Thanks to Mrs Mazaud for the stamps !!
There are stamps from: Spain, Andorra, Czech Republic, Vatican city, Belgica, Portugal, Egypt, Norway and of course France… in the french ones the most notable is the one of red and blue in the up right corner cause this one has the postmark of 1965 !!
So, friends if you are starting in the hobby like me, I advise you again to prevent all the people around you, they will be happy to help you with your collection 
Normally this is the first question that many people has when starting to collect stamps, because there are many options: to collect from one country, from one specific topic (ducks, presidents, comics, etc), or to complete series or years, or just collect everything.
For me the goal is to collect all I can from all the countries, I really like to see the differences between stamps from one country to another.
Here I go with the real first post, and here I show how do I start my collection:
The stamps I have in the beggining
How did I get these:
- From old letters that my husband and I had
- Contributions from my mother in law (Thanks Nicole!)
And with this first stamps I learned how to get them out of the envelope, I never imagined it was so easy: just to leave it in the water for sometime and then you will see the stamp floating, it doesn’t work like this with all so I gotta help some stamps to separate of the paper.
For the stamps in postcard I had a little problem, because I didn’t want to ruin the postcard, but I find a great tip here in this page: JUNIOR PHILATELISTS ON THE INTERNET, and I cite the paragraph that helped me a lot:
If you wish to soak a stamp off of a postcard or envelope without cutting up the envelope or post card (people will often offer to let you have stamps off of their mail if you don’t destroy the mail), here is how to do it. Cut two pieces of filter paper (from a new coffee filter) that are a little larger than the stamp you wish to remove. Wet these two pieces of filter paper until they are about to drip. Place the filter papers on top of each other and on top of the stamp. Cover with a small inverted plate or a watch glass (you can get these from broken clocks) and leave for about one-half hour (practice will get this down to a science). The purpose of the plate or watch glass is to retard evaporation. The stamp should slip off easily. Place the envelope or card somewhere to dry, and place the stamp face down on a Formica top or a smooth metal surface. The stamp will pop free when dry.
At this moment I am ready to continue growing my collection, another tip that I want to say (even if it has been say by many already) is that you should make all your friends and family know about your new hobby, so they be ready to hunt old or new envelopes for you, so you can have more stamps 
