Send one postcard every day for a year. Sounds like fun? A group of Postcrossing fans decided to do just this, but to make it a little more interesting they will make a piece of art every day to send through the post over the course of the year!

The project is called Mailart 365 and was started by Andytgeezer from the UK. Andy is into all things mail and was already featured on this blog for his other project, My REAL wall.

But who better to tell you about Mailart 365 than Andy himself? Here's what he has to share with you about his new project:

"Since taking up Postcrossing 2 years ago, I found that occasionally, I would get some awesome handmade artworks from other members. This sparked my interest in the mailart movement and I’ve since become heavily involved in the global mailart movement, sending and receiving postcard sized artworks.

I realised recently that I send so much of it and get so much fun out of making mailart, that I wanted to challenge myself to a year of mailart, and Mailart365 was born.

I’ve seen many people take on 365 challenges on the internet. The idea of a 365 is that you make something every day for a year and this is often so big a challenge that many people give up. I decided that the best way to keep myself motivated was to invite a few more mailartists to join me, so I blogged about it, not expecting anybody to join in. Today, only 2 months in (we started on December 1st, 2010 so that it wouldn’t be a new years resolution) Mailart365 has 50 members actively posting to the blog at www.mailart365.com.

The blog has room for 100 members in total, and if any postcrossing member wanted to join they’d be more than welcome to start any time, as long as they are committed to producing, on average, 1 piece of mailart a day for a year. It’s easy to apply to join us, just drop into the website at www.mailart365.com and go to the “Get involved” link at the top of the page.

I personally read every application and will email participants with instructions on how to get started and how to post to the blog. Everyone is in charge of posting their own cards onto the site and I’ll email full instructions on signing up.

We’ve formed a lovely vibrant and supportive community of mailartists, sending to each other and outside of the group too. It’s been a really wonderful experience. Many of us are Postcrossing users too, and are overjoyed when we see people that are willing to receive mailart and handmade cards and will usually make postcards that completely fit the profile.

Since discovering mailart, I’ve discovered artistic skills I never thought I had. I work as a science teacher and was always rubbish at art as a school so grew up thinking that was it, I’m a scientist and nothing more. The beauty of mailart though is that nobody judges your artwork against set rules to give you a grade. You are totally free to express yourself, and when it’s sent the person receiving it will appreciate your art. It beats getting a bill in the post any day!

In addition, criticism is very rare in mailart. As a way to learn and build your confidence as an artist it's perfect!

However, before anyone decides to embark on Mailart365, I have to warn you - It is a tough challenge, I’m already seeing that I have had to sacrifice some other things to make sure I get my daily artwork done, and often find myself up late at night to complete the artwork for the day, but it’s always worth it!"

If you really love mailart, this is your perfect challenge! And even if you don't plan to participate, don't forget to check out their website for their work.

We have mentioned before how Postcrossing as a school project can be a great idea. Teachers all over the world are discovering how to use Postcrossing as an educational tool. English, geography, culture - there's so much one can learn through postcards!

Adriana Salim is one of those teachers and we are happy to be able to share with you all how her experience has been.

I am an English teacher at a public school in Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil. I teach classes to teenagers who keep me busy trying to get them interested and motivated. The dean of the school where I work found out about Postcrossing and here we are, the students and I, involved in sending and receiving cards.

I surely couldn’t have run into something more helpful! Everybody waits anxiously for the mail and the school mailbox is checked every single day. Isn’t it fun to learn English this way? Each student is a single user. They write and receive their own cards. Our enthusiasm has also hooked the Biology teacher who has joined Postcrossing with his own kids at home.

We have many projects at the school: theater, dance, environment protection, reading and Postcrossing! Some of the students take part in more than one project.

Before Postcrossing, the students used to swap cards among themselves to practice their English skills. Nowadays we realise that it's much more fun to write real postcards with Postcrossing.

This is where we have our Postcrossing meetings once a week.

Our postcards are mailed to the school address. The mail is always brought by the same mailman. We go to the main post office downtown for stamps. We usually post our cards once a week at a smaller facility. The students keep their own cards at home in albums or on a wallboard. Now and then we display all the received cards at school.

This is our mailman delivering some mail and the school mailbox.

This is the board we keep the cards sent to the group as a whole.

This is the main post office where we buy stamps.

We once had a picture of the cards exhibition we prepared to celebrate the 18th anniversary of our school on the first page of Petrópolis newspaper.

As part of that commemoration a school postcard was created and is now available to be send by the students.

Thank you Adriana for sharing this with us!

Have other stories on how Postcrossing is being used on education? Then let us know! We love to hear about them.

And now, for something a bit different: Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe are two creative artists with a very special goal - to send a personal handwritten letter to everyone in the world! Impossible? Most likely. Crazy? Perhaps. But it's surely different, and they are doing their best to do it in a creative and mysterious way - they call it Mysterious Letters.

In April last year, they have sent handwritten letters to all 467 households in the Irish village of Cushendall - not bad for a start. And in November, they wrote 620 letters - all different and personal - to each home in Polish Hill (Pittsburgh, USA). Here's what BBC had to say about it:

But they are not stopping here. Now they want to go even bigger and write to even more people!

This time, they are allowing anyone to get involved in their enthusiastic plan - they have setup their project at kickstarter.com so that people can donate towards it (if there aren't enough supporters, the donation is returned).

In exchange for the donations, they are offering peculiar things - from allowing the supporters to choose a theme for the letters they will send, to actually receive handwritten letters from Michael and Lenka themselves. For the largest supporter level, they are even offering to hand deliver a letter to the supporter in person!

Even though it sounds a bit crazy, we love the creative way they are doing it all. You can find more information about the project at their Mysterious Letters blog and for details of how help them, check here.

On April 22nd it will be Earth Day 2010 and, in a time when climate change is becoming more serious than ever, it's important to not let this day go by unnoticed.

Postcrossing is collaborating with students in Tuvalu in a very special event around the Earth Day 2010 in which you can participate too - and it's really easy, read on.

But first, for the ones who may don't know where the country Tuvalu is, here's a short summary from its Wikipedia page:

Tuvalu

Formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa and Fiji. It comprises four reef islands and five true atolls. Its population of 12,373 makes it the third-least-populated sovereign state in the world.

From all the important facts about Tuvalu, there's something particularly important that you should: due to global warming and the rising of sea-level, there are predictions that in the next 50 years the entire population will have to be evacuated. The ocean can swallow Tuvalu whole, making it the first country to be wiped off the map by climate change! Isn't that scary?

Tuvalu students certainly think it is, and so do we. Postcrossing is proudly collaborating with them in this year Earth Day to help spread their word about how important it is to reflect and act upon climate change. The project is called "Send Tuvalu to the world" and consists on sending 422 postcards to all over the world sharing their thoughts about Tuvalu. The students organized a painting contest to draw a special stamp to be used in all the postcards, so these are very special indeed.

How would like to receive one of these postcards from the remote islands of Tuvalu? We know many of you would, so here's how:

Just leave a comment on this Postcrossing blog post saying you would like one. We will then select the receivers from the first users of each country until we reach the needed 422 addresses. There are many possible slots for each country, so be sure to leave a comment! We will then share your address with the organization of this event in Tuvalu and the students will send your way one of this very special postcards.

It's really simple to participate. But also very important, is to be aware - more than ever - about climate change, what it is doing to our planet, and what we should do about it.

At Postcrossing HQ we are always looking for ways to do good through postcards. Today we are happy to share with you a simple but very powerful way to ignite big smiles.

Hearts in Unity is an organization working towards improving the life of orphan and at-risk children in Tanzania. Through several projects, they aim to feed, clothe and give access to education to Tanzanian children as well as tell the world more about this African country, one of the worlds' poorest with over 2 million orphans.

One of Hearts in Unity projects is Messages from the Heart which consists in bringing heart-felt messages of greetings, friendship and encouragement to Tanzanian children. And what better medium for that than a postcard?

The Hearts in Unity representatives in Tanzania hand-delivers those messages to those who need them most, many in remote villages where there isn't even postal delivery services. This is the only way for some of those children to have contact with postcards and receive greetings from somewhere else in the world.

We believe this is a great match for Postcrossers, who understand what a postcard can do to lift our spirits and bring some encouragement.

If you wish to participate in this cause, this is the address where you can send postcards to:

Hearts in Unity
P.O. Box 6497
Moshi, Kilimanjaro
TANZANIA

For sending anything other than postcards such as parcels, donations or enquiries, please use this address instead:

Hearts in Unity
“Messages from the Heart”  
P.O. Box 41
Germantown, WI  53022
USA

You can use this address as well if you are in U.S.A. and wish to save some postage. The correspondence will be forwarded to Hearts Tanzanian representatives as well.

If you need ideas about what to write, or even how to write a message in Swahili, check Messages from the heart project page.

Please note, that Tanzanian children don't have a way to send postcards back - an international stamp can cost more than half of a family's average daily wage in Tanzania. However, Hearts in Unity also has a penpal project. In fact, they have many other projects, so be sure to check their website: http://www.heartsinunity.org/.