About This Stamp
Love is in bloom with the Love Flourishes stamp from the U.S. Postal Service®.
The stamp art features a fanciful garden of colorful flowers surrounding the word “Love” written in cursive script. Hand-painted with gouache on paper by artist Anna Bond, the illustration is whimsical and vibrant. The color palette of pink, coral, and yellow, and the choice of flowers — stylized roses, peonies, and dahlias — give the art a lush, romantic look that is at once retro and timeless.
The Love Flourishes stamp celebrates love of all kinds: romantic love, friendship, admiration, and love of family. Though the stamps are issued in time for Valentine’s Day, love is not something we express only on February 14. These beautiful stamps can be used any day of the year to send love to friends and family wherever they might be.
Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp with original art by Bond.
Love Flourishes was issued as a Forever® stamp. This Forever stamp will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Artist and Typographer
Anna Bond
Born and raised in Summit, New Jersey, Anna Bond loved painting as a child. After earning her B.S. in graphic design, she was hired as the art director for a Florida magazine and later worked in freelance illustration. In the process of designing wedding invitations, she rediscovered her lifelong love of stationery, and the idea for creating a collection of stationery was born.
In 2009, together with her husband, Nathan, Bond founded the Rifle Paper Co. To begin, they ran the business from their apartment, but the company quickly grew to more than 150 employees, with its products sold in 5,000 stores around the world.
Bond designs the majority of the company’s products, which feature her signature hand-painted illustrations. Her use of a vibrant color palette and the whimsical, nostalgic style of her illustrations have created one of the most recognizable brands in the stationery industry.
In addition to her work at Rifle, Bond has worked on illustration projects with clients that include Puffin Books, InStyle Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Lucky, and Martha Stewart Living.
The Art Directors Club of America named Bond as one of its Young Guns, an award that recognizes creative professionals 30 years of age and under.
Love Flourishes (2018) is Bond’s first project for the U.S. Postal Service®.
Photograph: Belathee Photography