About This Stamp
Celebrate any festive occasion with Colorful Celebrations, a stamp issuance from the U.S. Postal Service®. The booklet of 20 stamps includes 10 vivid, digitally created designs featuring eye-popping patterns that showcase geometric shapes, flowers, and birds. The stamp designs come in one of four colors: blue, orange, purple, and fuchsia. On each stamp, the words “FOREVER USA” appear in the bottom left corner.
The traditional Mexican art form papel picado inspired Atzin Gaytan’s digitally made stamp art. The Spanish term translates to “pierced paper.” Crafted with sharp tools and layers of tissue paper, papel picado designs often include birds, flowers, and religious iconography. During the creative process, Gaytan studied examples of traditional papel picado. Her digital artwork was inspired by the medium.
Sally Andersen-Bruce designed the stamps and Derry Noyes served as the project’s art director.
Colorful Celebrations was issued as a First-Class Mail® Forever® booklet of 20. These Forever stamps will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director and Typographer
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.
Stamp Designer
Sally Andersen-Bruce
Sally Andersen-Bruce has been the president and sole proprietor of her photography business for more than 30 years. Based in Connecticut, her assignments have taken her all over the world for clients such as IBM, Polaroid, AT&T, Pepsi, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal.
Her portfolio includes photographic content for corporations, institutions, and publications, focusing on executives, products, food, architecture, financial reports, and websites.
In addition to her commercial work, she has collaborated with several museums, including the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont; and the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York.
Andersen-Bruce’s photographs have appeared on numerous U.S. postage stamps, among them Classic American Dolls (1997), Neuter and Spay (2002), Nutcrackers (2008), Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet (2010), Weather Vanes (2012), Gingerbread Houses (2013), and Diwali, first issued in 2016. Most recently, her photograph appeared on the 2025 Lunar New Year • Year of the Snake stamp.
Stamp Artist
Atzin Gaytan
Atzin Gaytan of Litchfield County, Connecticut, is an information designer and illustrator. She holds a B.A. in industrial design from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, where she grew up. She also earned an M.S. in design and visual communications at Pratt University in Brooklyn, New York. She has spent the past decade of her career working at some the largest design firms in New York City, including Pentagram, Two Twelve, and Addison.
Gaytan is passionate about developing new ways to convey information and data through creative visual media. And her professional ambitions very much reflect her personal interests. For years, she has been using her illustrative talents to design and handcraft birthday and holiday cards for her loved ones. Her future goals include illustrating and writing a series of children’s books.
Colorful Celebrations (2016) is Gaytan's first project for the Postal Service™.