Postcrossing Blog

This year’s EUROPA stamp competition is officially open, and the theme promises to melt your heart…

Can you guess what it is? That’s right — old toys! Teddy bears, hula hoops, dolls, tin robots, rocking horses, slingshots, wooden trains… they all make an appearance, filling us with nostalgia and bringing back many happy memories.

To see all the stamps and cast your vote, go to the competition page and pick your favorite. May the best stamp win!

We’re always curious… which one did you pick? And if you’re European, what do you think of your own country’s choice of featured toy?

Madeleine (aka poissonrouge) is a Swiss teacher and the only postcrosser in Guinea (not to be confused with Guinea-Bissau or Equatorial Guinea). She has done a remarkable job of putting her adopted country on our map, by sending over 400 postcards from there… though this isn’t an easy job, as you will read on her interview!

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I was reading a book in English, and I stumbled upon a new word for me: swap. To fully understand what a swap was, I googled it, and that’s how I discovered this postcards swapping project. I immediately loved the concept and I registered and sent my first cards at once. Now I really know what a swap is! :-)

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Raising hens!

Some time ago, I received three beautiful Senegalese hens. Now I am looking for a Senegalese rooster, to start a small breeding. After a couple of months, I shall be able to train other women to do it too.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!

There are no mail carriers in Guinea, and hardly a few post offices.

Every week, my friends in Conakry fetch my post. They put it in a blue metal suitcase, and give the suitcase to a bus driver who drives the 600 km to Kissidougou once a week. The driver gives it to another friend in Kissidougou, and I go fetch it on my motorcycle. I am always eager to open it, as I never know what will be inside. Postcards and letters for me and my colleagues of course, among other gifts from friends everywhere in Guinea, as we have several suitcases travelin the whole country.

And when I want to send cards (that is, every week), I put them in the same blue suitcase, and it goes back to Conakry.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

It’s not about this very card specifically, but I collect cards about rice and cards about fields, so no wonder I cherish every rice field card.

Rice is the main food in Guinea: no rice, no life. I think seeing rice fields of different countries (or rice grains, or rice dishes), is very interesting. My Guinean friends love to see them too. They are amazed at this card especially, because a machine is doing all the work. In Guinea, men and women do all the work, sometimes with oxen. Here you have the harvest, Guinean style:

Have you inspired anyone else to join Postcrossing or start collections of their own?

My mother joined Postcrossing too some time after me, and then my sister. Unfortunately my sister stopped when she opened her own surgery. That was too already much work.

I tried to convince people in Guinea, but it’s very hard: sending a card costs what a poor family needs to eat for one day. And richer people misunderstand it as… a global dating service :-)

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about my job. I love all aspects of it (apart from accountancy). It could be called “helping people, especially women, to get self sufficient”. Training literacy teachers and trainers, writing or translating booklets in the Kissi language, teaching French and African literature, teaching how to make medical ointments or beauty creams, sewing, baking, … there are many useful things to do here.

But of course now with the ebola epidemic, I put all my strength in the fight against this disease. So instead of writing booklets about the medical uses of the papaya, it’s all about preventing ebola.

We’re fast approaching the highly anticipated milestone of 30 million postcards, and so it’s time to launch the traditional guessing contest! Hurray!

If you’re new to the game, it goes like this:

Every member has a chance to submit a bet for the day and time on which they think the postcard number 30 million will be registered. The bets need to be submitted on the contest page.

And of course, there are prizes for the best guesses, sponsored by MOO!

The postcrosser who guesses the exact minute when postcard number 30 million is registered wins a pack of 40 MOO postcards (20 original, 20 luxe) and a surprise set of 100 postcards from us.

But if you’re not the lucky one, don’t panic — we have more prizes! The 4 next best guesses (before or after the registering time) will also win a pack of 20 postcards from MOO.

Some rules: each time slot can only be chosen by one person, so the first person to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage, if you want, but only from the available time slots left. We will close the bets when there are 1000 postcards left to postcard 30,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

So… what are you waiting for? Fire up your spreadsheet or check your horoscope… but be quick to pick a time slot before we run out of them!

PS – If you’d like to order your postcards from MOO, don’t forget to follow the link to their special page for postcrossers, to get a 15% discount on your purchase! A small percentage of every purchase you make on MOO through that page is given back to Postcrossing – so with each pack of postcards you buy, you’re also helping the project. Win-win! :)

Happy birthday, Penny Black! The world’s first adhesive postage stamp was introduced 175 years ago today, on May 1st 1840, as part of Sir Rowland Hill's postal reforms which paved the way to the modern postal system.

Featuring the profile of Queen Victoria, the Penny Black was sold for just one year, as it was discovered the red ink being used to cancel it was too easily removed… In 1841, it was replaced by the Penny Red, which was easier to cancel using black ink.

It’s not a very rare stamp, as over 68 million specimens were printed, but very few complete sheets have survived. The ones that have now belong to the British Postal Museum and you can see them up close on their upcoming exhibition about this famous stamp. It will run from May 6th until August 7th, in London.

I discovered the Japanese folk art of etegami through Debbie’s (aka dosankodebbie) lovely postcards. Debbie is a professional translator who lives in Hokkaido, Japan. She began making etegami cards over 10 years ago, and joined Postcrossing to share them with people all over the world, as well as to receive art cards from other creative postcrossers!

As Debbie explains on her blog, “Etegami (e= ”picture"; tegami= “letter/message”) are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words". They are made to be mailed to one’s friends or family, and usually show an object from our everyday lives.

The illustrations appealed to me for their beauty and simplicity… but when researching the art and the philosophy behind it, I discovered there’s a lot of meaning and intention in every card. So I decided to ask Debbie a few questions about her art, and she kindly agreed to a mini-interview.

When did you start making etegami? What drew you to this form of art?

I first began making etegami in the year 2000. I had been making my own Christmas and New Year cards since childhood, using methods such as woodblock printing and the Japanese torn-paper collage art called chigiri-e. But these methods were too labor-intensive to do every day.

I grew up in an art-loving family, but my first love has always been words. Etegami suits me perfectly because it combines images and words. The tools for etegami are relatively few and simple, and you don’t need a lot of space to set them up. I have my tools in a small box, so I can spread them out on the kitchen table or on a corner of my work desk and paint whenever I have fifteen minutes of free time in my work day. Fifteen minutes, on average, is how much time I need to make one etegami.

Where do you find inspiration for your cards?

I can always find something seasonal to paint if I look in my refrigerator or in my garden. It can be an apple, an eggplant, a dandelion, a leaf on a tree, a sparrow, a coffee mug, or the slightly rusted kerosene tank that supplies our heating fuel. Etegami is at its best when it depicts a single object that represents the season with a few unfussy strokes and a minimum of color. Compared to most traditional Japanese art forms, it has very few rules, and the slightly awkward paintings of beginners and children are valued more than refined paintings.

Do you have any idea how many etegami cards you’ve made so far?

Ideally every etegami that I send should be a hand-painted original, but these days my mailing list is so long that when I can’t paint enough originals, I sometimes resort to prints of my images. I go through at least 800 washi cards in one year. If you include prints, I mail about 1,000 etegami postcards every year.

Besides postcrossers, who else do you mail your etegami cards to?

Although one of the pleasures of etegami is in the exchange, it’s even better to send etegami to people who can’t send anything back. I set aside every Monday to make etegami for people who are sick at home or in the hospital, and people who are depressed or disabled in a way that makes it difficult for them to send mail to anyone. This is especially meaningful to me because I have bad legs that keep me house-bound, and I’m so thankful that I can socialize with people through etegami.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t to gather my brushes and give it a go! :)

Thank you so much for sharing your hobby with us, Debbie! For more etegami inspiration, don’t forget to check out Debbie’s blog.