Postcrossing Blog

We’re a bit late to this announcement, but here it goes…

The two winners of the FunnyCard.nl giveaway are myshadow from Canada and AleksAndFlo from Germany. Congratulations!

And a big thank you to BrendaP, for sponsoring this giveaway! :)

Dianna is the user with most postcards sent from Macau, and she loves it when members decorate them, or fill them with stickers! :)

Here is what she had to say to our spotlight questions:

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

I became a postcard lover since my first trip abroad, I enjoy sending postcards to my friends and to myself. One day my friend Staci told me about postcrossing so I become a member. I am so glad about Postcrossings as it has enabled me to contact people who love postcards and to swap with people around the world. We are able to share our feeling and stories with each other. I just love it. Thanks to Postcrossing, I have collected so many beautiful postcards now and have made some good friends!

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

Yes, I love world travel, hiking, coffee tasting, reading, movies, music, gardening, cooking, quilting and learning other languages.

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

Here are some of my favourites:

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

I received a card from North Korea. :-)

Have you met any other members in real life?

Yes, one member from Thailand and one from Macau so far.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

My favorite part is to receive postcards. I really enjoying reading and looking at each one that I get. I also enjoy looking for cards to send to others. I really try to find cards that people will like. Sometimes that can be a challenge.

This weekend’s giveaway is sponsored by FunnyCard.nl, an online shop run by BrendaP, who was addicted to Postcrossing but found it hard to find nice cards… so she decided to start her own shop!

Today she is offering a set of 25 Postcrossing themed cards to 2 lucky users!

To participate, have a look at Brenda’s shop and leave a comment below, with a greeting in your own language. We’ll randomly pick the two lucky commenters by this time next week. And have a nice weekend!

Ever since joining Kickstarter some weeks ago, we’ve been discovering more and more postal related projects. One that caught our eye is called POSTICK, and aims to help transform regular things, like photographs or flyers into postcards. We’ll let Tatjana Buisson, the project creator, explain her vision:

Postcards are “magic little things” indeed and these handy adhesive labels make it easier to turn lots of things into one! The project is quite popular and fully funded already, but until June 19th you can still sponsor it to receive your own pack of POSTICKs. The more people join in and support this project, the easier it will be for Tatjana to get things going – perhaps one day you’ll see these neat labels in a shop near you!

Check out Tatjana’s other postcard related projects on her website, Postcard Happiness.

You have probably come across some of the popular UNESCO World Heritage Sites postcards. The UNESCO Sites are some of the best places to travel to in the entire world and receiving a postcards from one of these sites is just as neat. But what is UNESCO, and how are the sites picked? We’ll try to answer some of those questions in this post.

UNESCO stands for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The UNESCO World Heritage program was born in 1952. It sought to identify and designate sites around the world that were significant in one of three areas: education, science or culture.

The reason UNESCO was founded was because of a need to safeguard ancient temples in Egypt in 1952. Egypt had decided to build the Aswan High Dam, but this was going to flood the ancient temples of Abu Simbel and Philae. The United Nations wanted to protect these sites and so the UNESCO World Heritage Sites program was started.

Many countries from the UN came to help out and protect the sites in Egypt, which led to other protection campaigns for various other sites throughout the world. In 1965, the United States championed a draft convention to start a World Heritage Trust, which would protect these scenic, natural and historic sites. This was eventually adopted by the UN in 1972.

Sites are chosen to become World Heritage Sites by nomination from the group of 180 countries, which are called the States Parties. Countries in the group nominate sites within their territory that they want included and then they are voted on based on various criteria. After meeting these criteria for cultural and historical significance, a site becomes an UNESCO World Heritage Site and is given resources for protection and preservation from the World Heritage Trust.

Today, there are more than 800 of these sites in many different countries all over the world. You can learn more about them on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites website.

Have you visited many UNESCO sites? Which one is your favourite? :)