Postcrossing Blog

If you’ve been following the numbers on the homepage, you know the 80,000,000 postcard will be registered soon… and if you’ve been around for awhile, you know what that means: it’s time to open the guessing game for this big Postcrossing milestone. Here is how it works:

It should be easy: just choose a slot for the date and the minute you think postcard number 80,000,000 will be registered! You can have a look through Postcrossing’s statistics page if that helps… or maybe throw a dart at a calendar, or interpret some tea leaves — anything goes!

And naturally, we have some prizes as well, and this year it’s a veritable prize extravaganza! The 80 million guessing game is being sponsored by papersisters, who have very generously donated a bounty of stationery treasures for our winners:

• The postcrosser whose bet is the exact minute when postcard 80 million gets registered will receive a set of 12 monthly postcards “Travel the year”, an Airmail sticker sheet, a little snailmail notebook, a pen, three different rolls of tape of papersisters designs and their popular “weather” rubberstamp (+ the postcards and stickers mentioned below).
• The 6 next best bets (before or after the registering time) will receive 15 different HPC Happy Postcrossing from… postcards on general topics like seasons and holidays so they can be used globally, plus a set of 30 ID stickers in different designs.

Here are some rules we need to mention: each time slot can only be chosen by one single person, so the first postcrosser to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage if you’d like, but only from the available time slots left. The bets will be automatically closed when there are 1000 postcards left to postcard 80,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

Keep sending postcards and refining your guesses, and keep an eye on the counter on the frontpage of the website to know how many postcards still need to be registered. Good luck, everyone!

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

It’s not surprising that many of our members love stamps. Some collect stamps, others are just fascinated by the variety that’s out there. So that’s this month’s writing prompt!

At the moment, I have a few sets of stamps available. For the UK, I have some first class stamps from the Christmas 2024 collection, and a set of stamps which celebrate the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows, an iconic aerobatic display team who fly aircraft in close formation and do tricks in the air. Somewhere I still have one stamp left over from Christmas 2023, which I’m saving for a postcard to my grandmother.

For international mail, I need to stock up soon, as you can see! Right now I’m using stamps from the Tutankhamen set, which show a boat model and a guardian statue from Tutankhamen’s tomb. They’re kind of old, and don’t cover full postage, so I use “makeup value” stamps to pay the full postage. The 50p ones still show the Queen’s head for now, but some of the stamps in my photo (like the Christmas 2024 ones and the Red Arrows set) have King Charles III’s head now.

I do have a couple of odd stamps left over—a stamp from the Pride set and one from the recent dinosaur set—that I’m saving for when I get an address of someone who looks like they’d especially appreciate them.

What about you? Do you have any exciting stamps at the moment? Any stamps with stories? We’d love to hear about them here, and you can also write about them on your postcards this month if you’re stumped for what to say!

It’s that wonderful time of the year again when postcards become more than just a happy surprise in your mailbox — they transform into books and help for those who struggle with reading! We’re excited to kick off the 12th edition of the “Cards for Literacy” campaign, celebrating over a decade of partnership with Deutsche Post and helping many people in Germany improve their literacy skills throughout all these years. Let’s keep this December tradition alive and thriving!

If you’re in Germany, it’s time to organize your stationery and make sure you have all the postcards and stamps you need! Every card you send in December (and that’s registered by February 28, 2025) will contribute to this meaningful cause.

As if making a difference weren’t rewarding enough, you’ll also have a chance to win some neat prizes: one €100 voucher and five €50 vouchers for the Deutsche Post Online Shop. The more cards you send, the more chances you’ll have to win. In March 2025, Paulo will tally the total number of postcards sent and funds raised, and the lucky winners will be randomly selected and announced. Last year, we raised an incredible €12,078.30 for Stiftung Lesen, all thanks to your efforts!

If you’re outside Germany, you’re still an essential part of the campaign. By registering the postcards you receive from Germany quickly, you help senders mail their next cards sooner, keeping the momentum going.

Stiftung Lesen continues to do vital work improving literacy for children, adolescents, and refugee families learning German. Literacy skills can open doors and change lives, and we’re honored to support their mission.

And now, all that is left to do is for us to come together and make the 12th year of this campaign truly special. Whether you’re sending or registering postcards, every small action adds up to something extraordinary!

P.S. Postcrossing respects your privacy and will not share your personal information. Full details of the campaign can be found here (in German).

We’ve been biting our tongues to share the news with you, and now it’s finally time: bpost will launch five new Postcrossing-themed stamps to celebrate Postcrossing’s 20th anniversary next year! 🎉 The stamps come in a special stamp sheet that looks like a postcard:

Isn’t that clever? 🤩 The stamp sheet was designed by Geert Wille and features the 2 main languages of the country. On the stamps, you can see the several steps of the journey of a postcard, from writing to arriving in someone’s hands across the world — like a “paper airplane”, flying around and connecting us all!

The stamp issue will be on sale from 16th June 2025 and we know there’s still a long time to go… but we can’t wait for next summer to see these stamps in the postcards sent from Belgium!

It’s Autumn in the north hemisphere, and trees all around us are putting on their most beautiful display of the year. It’s impossible not to notice all the vibrant reds, yellows and browns of fallen leaves, practically begging to be brought in and turned into something special. So when we stumbled on Beemo’s (aka wild_grazer) stylish postcards on Reddit, we asked her if she would like to write a short tutorial for the community. Here she is, with a step-by-step guide, inviting you to turn the surrounding magic into unique postcards!

First of all, it is time to go outside and collect some leaves. They should have some veins and have an interesting shape, as these are the main things that will create an interesting print. It doesn’t matter if the leaf is a bit dried out as you can soak it in some water for about 5 minutes and it will be soft again. Just make sure it is not broken. Clean the leaves and pat them dry.

You don’t need any fancy tools for this tutorial. You can use whatever you have available. You can use a pencil to make some guides so you know where to exactly put the leaf. I just put a little dot in the middle.

Apply a thin layer of paint on the leaf on the side with the veins, using a sponge brush or even a normal sponge. I used linocut printing ink, but acrylic or gouache probably works just fine. Make sure to execute this step and the next ones quickly as otherwise the paint will dry out.

You could add a little bit of water to your paint. This will create more of a watercolour effect. Without the water the print will be more refined. You can experiment with the amount of water and amount of paint that you apply for varying effects.

Turn over the leaf and place it on your card. Try to place it down without moving it as this will create stains.

Cover the leaf with a sheet of paper that fully covers the leaf and press it down/rub firmly. Normal printing paper would be too thin for this step, try to use paper of about 150–250gsm. You can also use a sheet of rubber such as for linocutting, which is what I did.

Remove the covering paper or rubber and leaf and let the card dry. The last step is to decorate the back however you want. And you’re done!

Et voilà! I hope this inspires some of you to go out there and appreciate the beauty of this time of the year. There are not many deciduous trees where I live, so I’m planning to give it a try with herbs from the garden, perhaps using light ink on dark paper. If you decide to give it a try, come share your results on the handmade postcards and mail art forum topic!