Connie Morin of Lewiston decided she needed an indoor hobby when she lived in Florida. It was too hot to go outside and she was “sick and tired” of crocheting.

Her husband’s uncle had passed away and left a stamp collection to his daughter, a postal carrier in Lewiston. Not knowing what to do with it, Morin, 79, offered to take it and make something with the collection.

She found a “school chair,” a simply constructed seat with square slats and rails, at an antique store for $5 and started to decoupage the stamps onto the golden wood.

“You don’t see one piece of wood,” Morin boasted. “Before we put the bottom (felt feet) on, I put stamps on there so no wood would show.”

She did not research the value of the stamps before starting her project many years ago. She figured if her husband’s cousin wasn’t worried, neither was she.

But she still has tiny moments of panic while working on a chair — her newest one was started only a few weeks ago for her son who lives in New Hampshire.

“Every time I glued a stamp on there, I thought, ‘Oh my God. Maybe it’s worth a lot of money.'”

She would quickly dismiss the thought and move on.

As she sat in her Florida living room carefully gluing the stamps with regular Elmer’s glue, she counted the postage as she applied them. When she got to 1,000, she gave up. The chair was over halfway done at that point. 

Her favorite part of the first chair that she gave to her husband’s cousin was the Kennedy stamps prominently placed on the back slat. 

“It’s a little bit of concentration because you have to make sure the next stamp will fit right in; you try not to overlap,” Morin said. Not only is she jigsaw-puzzling the stamps together, she tries to keep the chair visually stimulating by varying the colors.

After she finishes the chair for her son, and repairs the chair given to her husband’s cousin after it was sat on, she might try a table if her daughter is interested in such a “showpiece.” 

“It’s a hobby,” Morin said, shrugging. “It passes my time away. And at our age, where can we go? In the evenings, it can be scary to go out at night. Basically we’re here every night.”