Postcrossing Blog

Another year, another chance to participate on the Graceful Envelope Contest!

This year, the theme is “Pushing the envelope”, which is very exciting as it leaves room for all kinds of artistic interpretations. The organizers explain how this motto embraces two concepts at the heart of the contest:

The first meaning dares you to take your creativity beyond your comfort zone. “Push the envelope” and find new ways to use graphic design, hand lettering and postage stamps to enhance your entry. It may be a small canvas, but you are capable of big ideas.

The Graceful Envelope Contest also celebrates the significance of writing, sending and receiving letters. In this era of email, tweets and emojis, seeing a hand-addressed envelope in your mailbox can make any day special. So your entry should “push the envelope” in the sense of promoting the exchange of letters. Depict the joy of letter writing. Or salute an American tradition as old as the U.S. Constitution, which empowered Congress “to establish post offices and post roads."

One of the previous contest’s judges 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 arrive before March 27th 2017) and there are separate categories for children too, so do encourage your little ones to participate!

You can read the contest rules and how to participate on the Washington Calligraphers Guild website, and check out all of last year’s winners on their Flickr page for some inspiration.

We did it everyone!! 🎉 40 million postcards delivered and registered! 🎉 What a great way to start the week!

Curious to find out which postcard was the lucky one? Here it goes: Postcard number 40,000,000 (TW-2118751) was sent by navi in Taiwan on December 1st, and registered today at 6:39 AM (UTC) by Alexis11 in France! Hurray!

Not surprisingly, all spots on our guessing game were taken long ago, and the lucky winner was BeckyThatcher, whose guess was spot on! Well done, your new set of 40 Cardcetera postcards are on their way.

The other four lucky postcrossers who came the closest to the right time were Anne-Liam, frosch0980, Neraksrekked and klim4uk — great job! You’ll each receive a pack of 20 Cardcetera postcards as well!

Both the sender and the receiver will also receive a surprise pack of 20 postcards from Cardcetera, to celebrate their good luck.

Last but not least, our big heartfelt thank you to our team of volunteers, to Astrid at Cardcetera for generously sponsoring this giveaway with her beautiful cards… and, most of all, to you — all of you who connect the world through postcards!

And now, the countdown to the next million begins — one postcard, and one smile at a time! Happy Postcrossing! :)

All Postcrossing meetups are special — but sometimes, postcrossers really go the extra mile to do something a little different on their own gatherings. We love hearing all about meetups taking place in trains or deserted islands… and now, a meetup that happened in two countries simultaneously!

This special meeting happened on January 15th, and was organized by Shiyun (aka Sybones) from Singapore and Jifeng (aka shijifeng) from Wuxi, in China. Distances are relative in the internet era, so despite being 3770km apart, Chinese and Singaporeans postcrossers were able to chat as if being in the same room via their mobile devices.

Shijifeng’s friend Arlyna (aka arlynab) designed a special postcard featuring elements from both countries to commemorate the event, which were distributed among the two groups.

Both groups held mini-presentations, wrote postcards and then talked to each other on Facetime. Despite some internet and language hiccups, a great time was had by all!

That sounds like a lot of fun! A big thank you to the organisers and all the attendants for putting such a special meeting together. We challenge you to outdo them on your next meetup — and tell us all about it! :)

Today is the day to thank our mail carriers, and a few days ago we invited you to make something special for these everyday heroes. A lot of you showed us the postcards you had made, and we were in awe of your talent and creativity… so many mail carriers are going to have a super special day because of you!

You can see all the submissions we’ve received on this gallery. We had a prize to give to the best one though, so here it goes — the winner is…

… EmilJohn (aka Emil) from the Philippines, who drew, wrote and decorated the card above. It reads “February 4 is ”Thank-a-mailman Day". Thank you and all those who work in order for us to receive our letters. Thank you for delivering my postcards always :) Respectfully, Emil, postcrosser."

Isn’t it just stunning? Congratulations Emil on your new stickers.

Now it’s time to go and thank our mail carriers, let them know we appreciate their hard work! 📬

PS – A big thank you to Pipsticks for sponsoring this giveaway and making all our postcards a little bit more fun! For those of you who would like to give the service a try, use the code HAPPYMAIL for 20% off the 1st month of any subscription.

February is just around the corner… which means it’s time for another Month of Letters challenge! Are you joining this year?

On September 2011, Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break. She spent the entire month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results of this personal challenge were a revelation:

When I write back, I find that I slow down and write differently than I do with an email. Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing. In some ways it forces me to think about time more because postal mail is slower. “By the time you get this…” It is relaxing. It is intimate. It is both lasting and ephemeral.

How so? I find that I will often read the letters that I receive twice. Once when I get them and again as I write back. So, that makes it more lasting. It is more ephemeral because I don’t have copies of the letters that I write and I am the only one who has copies of the letters that my correspondents write. So, more ephemeral.

I know a lot of postcrossers share these feelings — this is part of the reason why Postcrossing exists!

Mary decided to turn February into a Month of Letters, in which she challenges herself and everyone who decides to join to write and send at least a piece of postal mail every day. Here are the rules:

• Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture or a cutting from a newspaper… anything goes!
• Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

We can’t help but feel that postcrossers have their work cut out for them in this challenge… Nevertheless, we wanted to encourage you all to do it! Write postcards, letters or aerograms or surprise a friend with an unexpected package. Maybe even pick a Facebook/Twitter friend and send them an offline “hello!” or catch up on those “thank you” notes you’ve been meaning to send.

Are you up to Mary’s challenge? Grab your stationery and stamps and start writing! 😊

PS. – Don’t forget that February 4th is Mail Carrier Appreciation Day!