Postcrossing Blog

Meet Melvin, a portable and complex contraption made just with the purpose of signing and stamping postcards!

“Conveniently built in two old suitcases, Melvin the Mini Machine is a Rube Goldberg machine specifically designed to travel the world. Each time Melvin fully completes a run, he ‘signs’ a postcard and sticks a stamp to it – making it ready to be sent.”

Melvin was created by design studio HEYHEYHEY, because they had some time to kill and needed a challenge to their creativity. How much fun would it be to have one of these for our own postcards? :D

Thank you mothwriter and badshaped, for forwarding us the video!

Last week we showed you a wonderful project by a group of Lithuanian members, who designed and printed their own postcards. They offered to send 16 lucky postcrossers a postcard from their special set… but the response was so overwhelming, they had a lot of trouble picking the winners, and therefore decided to increase that number to 45! :D

So, without further ado, the members who will receive a postcard from Lithuania are: qvovadis, AnaPinto, pierrev, strummer, MrPooney, famvanrems, tiira, Kazoline, budzin, milko, SueJames, Kirst, drup, leojus, niteshyft, cinghiospol, hulottati, Mayangiras, neitrino, Roo17, vchera, TinTin, GSD, SilentSilence, araneia, arti_baki, hillie67, Ilona500, Hansgom, geekerella, ARod26, PoppySu, signhild, Olha_K, diome, emma-cole, sofree, ceoramalho, mahoema, wikinet, MiniP, rhackett, only_rose, Dechen and zie.

Congratulations everyone! And a big thank you to this group of postcrossers, for their generosity!

On a somewhat related note, another group of postcrossers from Lithuania is currently working on convincing their postal services to make a Postcrossing stamp. If you’re Lithuanian and want to help this idea move forward, please join them on this Facebook group. Thank you!

You know when sometimes you just can’t find a single postcard that you like…?

It happens now and then, in some places more than others, and it used to happen to a group of Lithuanian postcrossers – they were frustrated by the fact that they had a beautiful country, but no way to showcase it to the world properly through postcards!

Can you guess where this is going? Of course, they decided to make their own postcards! They searched for photos on their own archives, and looked for professional photographers or illustrators who wanted to share their art pieces with the world.

A couple of months and a few hundred pictures later, they took a vote on a Lithuanian forum to choose which pictures should be turned into postcards. Sixteen postcards were chosen for this special set, and sent to a professional print shop. Six thousand postcards were then printed and distributed between the participants of the project.

The Lithuanian postcrossers who undertook this challenge told us it wasn’t an easy process, but it was very rewarding to finally have an assortment of postcards they were proud to send out!

They’re so happy with them in fact, that they’re looking forward to sharing them with you! :) They have 16 postcards set aside to 16 members. To receive one of them (sent from Lithuania, naturally!), all you need to do is leave a comment below, telling us something you know about Lithuania. You have a week to participate, and the 16 lucky users will be picked by the Lithuanian group themselves.

Have fun discovering this lovely country by the Baltic sea!

Some time ago, we were contacted by Wanting Luo (Celery0625), a student from the University of Cincinnati who was using Postcrossing as a theme for a design projects. His idea was to create a infographic which would show the project’s evolution throughout the years.

The result is the lovely graphic above. It features a lot of facts about Postcrossing, including our growth curve, most important milestones, which countries have been more heavily represented throughout the years, and a lot of other interesting details. Have a look and let us know what you think!

PS – This is a big image, so depending on your screen, you might have to scroll the window sideways and vertically to see it.

Ever heard of Kickstarter? It’s a platform that allows people to start and support great projects, the kind which are sometimes too small to be on everyone’s radar. A place to discover and fund creative endeavours, if you will.

Now and then we have fun browsing the website and checking out what everyone is up to – we especially like stationery related ideas!

A project that caught our eye last week is called Going Nowhere – we’ll let Andrew and Jake tell their story:

As big fans of both roadtrips and postcards, we can’t wait to see what this duo of photographers will come up with! For more info on their project, check out their Kickstarter’s page.

In other news, we have the results of MOO’s giveaway from last week! Over 300 people left a comment telling us which pack of ready-made designs they preferred – thank you all for your enthusiasm! Sadly, Paulo’s little script could only pick three postcrossers… and so the 3 lucky winners are skybluestain, Saouri and irisseraphic :) Congratulations!