Postcrossing Blog

Connie (aka clouisesz), from Illinois USA is a teacher who shares her passion for postcards with her young students, and has once been to a Postcrossing meetup in a very saccharine location… read on to find out more!

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

I was looking for pen pals for my students (ages 4 and 5) and not having any luck. While searching the web, I happened upon Postcrossing. I really liked the idea and thought if I could get a few postcards I could share them with my students. Even though it wasn’t a pen pal, I thought it would be a great way to introduce my students to the world they live in. I loved learning about other countries but soon realised it wasn’t the countries that I loved learning about as much as making the amazing connection. It didn’t take long before I was hooked.

I ventured out and started investigating some of the forums and made many more friends. After that, I decided to try setting up a forum post of my own asking postcrossers if they would enjoy writing to one of my students. The response was absolutely incredible! I have students from 3 years ago that are still writing to a person they met from our postcard project. People all over the world are so lovely and my students experiencing that, was a lesson I had not planned.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

My hobbies are few, I love Postcrossing and hanging out with my family. I live in a lovely area filled with bike and walking trails so I am able to walk and enjoy the outside all the time.

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

My favorite place to mail my postcards and my students postcards is the Wayne Post Office. This is a quaint little post office with great postal workers.

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

In my profile, I had mentioned that my class is trying to collect all the alphabet flower fairy postcards. We have almost all of them now either through Postcrossing people sending them to me, or through Random Acts of Smileness.

I will also have to say a very good Postcrossing friend introduced me to the Mainzer Cats and I do love them.

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

I love all of Postcrossing, but I think when I see the word Hurray in my email and I know a my postcard has made it thousands of miles or hundreds of mile, to me that is thrilling.

Have you met any other members in real life?

Once I was lucky enough to attend a very small Postcrossing Meetup in Wisconsin at the Jelly Belly Factory. It was very nice sharing our passion for Postcrossing!

Is there anything that you are passionate about?

I am passionate about many things, but I would suppose right now I am most passionate about my job. I love being a preschool teacher and knowing I have the chance to touch lives. I am passionate about helping children learn that there is so much good in people, even though we constantly hear the bad.

Ten years ago today, Paulo launched a fresh version of the website, which included cool features such as avatars, maps, the inactive state, the little ticker on the frontpage that shows what’s happening now… aaaaaand this blog too! 🎉

Although the Postcrossing blog is but a small part of the website, it’s something that we’re particularly proud of. Through it, we share news and interesting stories, introduce members and their creative endeavours, talk about mail and stationery, celebrate milestones… and we also hear back from you on the comments, which is the best part!

Ten years of existence is definitely something worth celebrating, so today we’re digging the archives for some of our favourite posts and series.

Looking at tags on the blog’s Archive page, it’s easy to spot that our longest series of posts have featured spotlight interviews, in which we ask a few questions to members of the community. We’ve talked with 113 postcrossers so far, who have showed us their mailboxes, their mail carriers and their favourite postcards. We’ve talked to many other postcrossers too, about the wonderful meetups they’ve organised, their quirky postcard walls and nice friendship stories they’ve experienced because of the project.

We’ve also collaborated with museums, libraries, schools, charities and post offices — all of which we’re quite proud of.

Ten years later, we’re still fond of researching the history of post offices and postcards and finding out about other cool projects that use mail. And one of our favourite parts is coming accross cool new artists and stationery makers.

And last, but not least, the Little Mail Carriers were introduced to the blog back in 2010 and are very dear to our heart. They’ve traveled around the world several times over, reporting their adventures and showing us the beauty and charms of the places where mail travels to. Who knows where will they pop up next?

Here’s to another 10 years of bringing you nice stories from the Postcrossing community and the world of mail! 😊

Time to submit your entries to the Graceful Envelope contest, one of the nicest mailart contests out there! Every year, they pick a theme for the submissions, and 2018's topic is simply the weather. 🌦

From their website:

There’s always something to say about the weather. From severe storms to sowing crops, to using the sun and wind for renewable energy, the weather affects everyone. Summon a brainstorm to capture what’s outside your window—or outside the box—and design a winning envelope!

And if you think you don’t have a nice enough handwriting to participate – don’t fret! One judge on the contest’s 2011 edition revealed that they’re not simply looking for the best calligraphy or painter… in the end, what really matters is the winning combination of all elements in the envelope (ie, design, calligraphy and stamps) and how they work together to reflect the year’s theme.

The contest is open to entries from all around the world (as long as they are sent in by March 26th 2018) and there are separate categories for children too, so do encourage your little ones to give it a go!

You can read the contest rules and how to participate on the Washington Calligraphers Guild website, and check out some of the previous entries for inspiration on their Flickr page.

Good news from Hungary! The country of goulash, Rubik’s cube and Franz Liszt is the latest to join the club of Postcrossing stamp issuers! Magyar Posta did a wonderful job with their design, which debuts today in many post offices all around the country, as well as online. Have a look:

This cheerful postman was made by Hungarian illustrator Zsolt Vidak, whose designs might be familiar to the local members, as they are featured in many other of their national stamps. The stamp will be sold in mini-sheets of four stamps, and 60.000 of these sheets have been printed.

The matching First Day Cover (FDC) is equally neat and shows a happy Hungarian mailbox, jumping for joy at all the colourful postcards it receives!

Pretty cool, right? To celebrate the shiny new Hungarian stamp, a meetup will take place in Budapest today. The stamp is available in online and in post offices throughout Hungary.

Our thank you to Magyar Posta for working with us and the Postcrossing community to bring this stamp to life. Hurray!

The writing prompts are an ongoing experiment that invites 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!

We’re posting February’s writing prompt a couple of days ahead of schedule because other good things are coming… 😉  Stay tuned!

This month’s writing prompt was suggested by Norway_girl on the forum. Here it goes:

If possible, write about someone whose work you know and enjoy, so that others can discover it too! It could be a contemporary or classical author, or perhaps even a favourite poet, children’s book or cookbook’s author. Make it interesting and help others discover a bit of your country’s literary heritage.

In the past few years, as friends got married and started having babies, we’ve been slowly rediscovering Portuguese children’s books and fell in love with a publisher called “Planeta Tangerina” (Tangerine planet). Their books are filled with beautifully illustrated and irreverent stories, making it hard to pick just one… A particular author of theirs that we enjoy is Isabel Minhós Martins, whose many books are often translated into other languages. “Don’t cross the line!” is our favourite — a quirky story on dictatorship, revolutions and the power of people, taking place in felt-tip illustrations on the left and right sides of each two-page spread.

What about your country? Which authors have you been reading or having fun discovering? Which ones do you think the recipient of your postcard would like to hear about? Don’t be afraid to skip the classics and recommend some little-known authors on your postcards — if you like their works, it’s likely that some other postcrossers will too!

PS – Got some cool ideas for more prompts? Feel free to share them on this forum thread!