Postcrossing Blog

It’s in days like today that the power of a simple postcard becomes obvious. The World Lupus Day is celebrated today across the world, and thanks to many Postcrossers who kindly joined our LupusCrossing project, many smiles are being lit right now and many more will be created!

An impressive total of 251 butterfly postcards have flown from Postcrossers to the hands of Lupus patients, coming from many different countries. LupusCrossing has been a great success and we couldn’t be more thankful for everyone that participated on this project. The messages sent from all over the world were overwhelmingly kind and full of hope, as you can check yourself in the German Lupus Association website where all the postcards are displayed. We are very proud to have contributed to make the Lupus patients days into happier ones. The world is a better place to live thanks to Postcrossers.

Simone from the German Lupus Association has reassured us that Lupus Patients will have access to the butterfly postcards and their nice messages, plus they will make their best to show them throughout their 80 regional groups in Germany. Moreover, and as promised, they will send thank-you postcards to 3 randomly chosen senders of each country that participated, plus to a few hand-picked ones. So, if you have sent a butterfly postcard and wrote your address in it, a postcard might be heading your way soon!

And if you wonder how all the butterflies look together, here are some photos of them:

(click to enlarge)


(click to enlarge)

We are certainly looking forward for similar opportunities to make someone’s day a brighter one, if you have some ideas, please let us know!

Happy LupusCrossing!

Päivää and God dag Postcrossers!

Many of you are already avid fans of Moomins/MuminTroll/Muumi. The Moomins are the major characters in the series of comic strips and books illustrated and written by renowned Finnish artist Tove Jansson, who declared that his characters are partially based on many of her family and friends.

The main appearance of Moomins is very similar to hippopotamuses but they are actually a family of trolls who live in Moominvalley. The Moomins interact with their friends such as Hemulens, Sniff, The Snork maiden, Snufkin and Little My. The major premise of most Moomin stories revolves around the idea of accepting the differences of others and accommodating their specific needs.

The first book was released in 1945 and soon more books, a comic strip series, and a television adaptation followed. There are even a number of movies based on Jansson’s lovable family of trolls. Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Russia, Poland, Britain, Austria, Germany, and Japan all made TV and movie adaptations of the Moomins.

It was not long after the success of Moomins (called the Moomin Boom) reached its peak as operas, Moomin products, playrooms, museums, albums, and even a Moomin theme park emerged in many parts of Finland and Japan.

If you have any other interesting information about Moomins, just comment and share!

Have you heard of Owney the dog? This dog was a postal sensation during the late 1880s to the 1890s. Of course, he’s still popular today but not as popular as he did during the climax of his career.

One day in 1888, a stray dog wandered into a post office in Albany, New York. The postal workers took the dog in for the night and the poor, little fella fell asleep on a pile of sacks which were used to carry mail. During the next days, the postal workers decided to keep him and gave him his very own mail sack to sleep on.

Some accounts claim that Owney became so familiar with the scent and texture of the mail sacks that he followed one wherever it was taken. Another account says that Owney’s sack was needed one day and Owney followed its scent as it was brought into a postal train. Whatever the real story was, Owney’s career as the Post Office’s mascot was launched through his love of mail sacks.

Owney would follow the mail sacks onto mail wagons, mail trains, and even mail steamships! Soon, the wonder dog was traveling all over the United States and the world!

In 1897, Owney died of a peaceful death. Through the various fundraisings performed by his friends and fans, his body was preserved and immortalized as an inspirational display – first at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the United States Post Office (USPS) and then at the Smithsonian Institution.

If you’d like to see more of Owney, he’s quite popular on Flickr. There are a few postcards with Owney’s image on them and these can be new ideas for your next postcard mailing!

Hola Postcrossers! We hope you had a wonderful Easter! We found another interesting topic about postcards: Kaj Stenvall and his famous Duck.

Lots of Postcrossers have been emailing us about this amazing and creative Finnish painter and his wonderful masterpieces that frequently feature a duck in many settings and characterizations.

Stenvall’s paintings are now being used in postcards everywhere. So you either have seen some of these postcards lately but didn’t know who the painter was or you’re familiar with the painter but do not have any idea why he paints the way he does.

If you don’t know anything about this painter at all, read along because we’re sure you’ll find him and his paintings very interesting. Who knows, you’ll even want a postcard with his famous duck paintings.

It all started in 1989 when Stenvall made a few paintings featuring a duck that looks very similar to Walt Disney’s Donald Duck. However, his duck’s appearance has increasingly moved away from the Disney character’s guise through the years. The duck’s gender, age, and skin color have all shifted from one painting to another. The Duck has slowly become its own character.

According to Stenvall himself, the Duck is a symbol of humanity. Contrary to popular belief, the Duck isn’t Stenvall’s alter ego nor does it serve any purpose in delivering some kind of message from Stenvall. According to Stenvall’s official website,

It’s simply a jumping off point into the multidimensional world of Stenvall’s art, to draw the viewer deep inside his paintings and then, to step aside.

Isn’t that genius thinking?

What’s even better is that the duck makes viewers think about its purpose and imagine things that Stenvall himself wouldn’t even think about his own paintings.

Challenge yourself and your postcard recipients by sending them one of Stenvall’s paintings. Let’s see what stories you guys can come up with just by looking at the duck and its surroundings.

If you want to see more of Stenvall’s art, visit his website here.

We aren’t sure if these postcards are available online but we found a couple at this website: Art Unlimited.

If any of you have any idea where your fellow Postcrossers can get one online, please comment on this blog post and leave a link! Thanks a lot!

Till next time!

Do you consider yourself a postcard collector?

If you think you’re serious about collecting postcards, think again! Introducing… Mary L. Martin, Postcard Collector to the Extreme!

This amazing lady from Perryville, Maryland, USA has a postcard collection that numbers not only by the hundreds, definitely not by the thousands, but by the millions!

Started forty years ago, her huge collection features postcards from the past and present, from celebrities and ordinary people, from every city, every town, and every country, and just about anything you can think of.

Here’s a two-minute video of Mary and her Perryville postcard shop as featured in WBAL’s Rob’s Attic by Rob Roblin:

If you want to check out more about Mary L. Martin and her postcard collection, visit her official site at http://www.marylmartin.com. Millions of postcards are also for sale in this website.

Mary L. Martin Postcards is the largest postcard shop in the whole world. If you and your Postcrossing buddies live near or around Perryville, Maryland, this shop is a good place for a meetup. If you guys are from somewhere else, this destination is an interesting idea for a Postcrossing field-trip!