Postcrossing Blog

Remember the Typographic Postcards’ Kickstarter project we mentioned back in June? The project was a big success and Harald ended up printing and shipping tons of postcards! We received our backer’s reward last week, and can confirm that the postcards are gorgeous, printed on high-quality paper with a very smooth finishing. The words on them are simple yet so versatile… there really seems to be a card for every occasion!

Harald kindly included a few extra packs on our reward, which we’re struggling happy to give away to 2 lucky postcrossers! :)

For a chance to win one of two packs of 26 postcards, leave a comment below and let us know of a word or very short sentence you think would be a good fit for these cards! Here are some that have already been printed:

Good luck everyone! Don’t forget to check back on this post around this time week to know whether your name was picked by Paulo’s random number generator.

PS – For fans of Harald’s work, he’s currently crowdfunding the 5th edition of his typographic wall calendar, which is entirely made of the same keyboard keys as these postcards… perfect present for a designer friend? :)

December is just around the corner, which means it’s time to dress Postcrossing up for the holidays, and to launch our yearly campaign with Deutsche Post to make your postcards count for a good cause! By now you know the drill, so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we’re proud to announce that…

So if you’re in Germany, all you have to do is keep sending postcards! If your December postcards are registered before the end of February 2016, you’ll be contributing to this cause.

And though only postcards sent from Germany count, there’s always a receiver in every postcard exchange — so each time a card from Germany is registered, the recipient will be indirectly contributing to this donation as well!

To make things even more interesting, there will also be some nice prizes for the participants:

• Two 50€ vouchers for www.allyouneed.com.
• Three 40€ vouchers for Marke Individuell.
• Two high quality pen sets, from Pelikan.
• Ten custom-designed Postcrossing stamp sheets (international).

The winners will be picked up by Paulo's random number generator in early March 2016, at which point we will also announce the value raised by the German postcrossers to Stiftung Lesen here on the blog. Last year, we broke our 2014 record and raised a very impressive total of €8,382.40… can we do even better this year? 😀

Stiftung Lesen is a German non-profit organization, working to increase literacy – especially among children and adolescents. They promote reading through several different activities, such as the “My first letter” contest.

So… what are you waiting for? If you’re in Germany, grab a pen and your stack of postcards and stamps, and start writing some postcards! The more cards you send, the more you’ll contribute to this cause – and the more chances you’ll have of winning a nice prize! :)

P.S. – As always, we respect your private information and will not share it with any company without your express permission. The full details of this campaign can be read here (German only).

Have you been a good girl or boy this year? If so, it’s probably time you wrote to Santa and let him know! :)

In many countries around the world, writing to Santa Claus is a big part of holiday’s fun for the little ones. We want to do our best to keep this lovely letter-writing tradition alive, so every year, we ask you to help us compile an updated list of addresses where these letters can be mailed to.

Here’s the list of Santa addresses for 2015, so far:

• Australia
• Austria>
• Belgium
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Canada
• Denmark
• Finland
• Germany
• Ireland
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Russia
• Slovakia
• Sweden
• United Kingdom
• USA

Check out where to send your letters to Santa in your country, and pass it along to the parents and children you know, to help keep the tradition going!

And if your country has a special address for Santa which isn’t featured here, just post the link in the comments and we’ll be happy to add it.

Once again, we give the Little Mail Carriers center stage, so that they can finish telling us about their adventures in Leicestershire (here’s part one of their adventures in the UK, in case you missed it)!

Naturally, we wanted to take part in a Postcrossing meeting whilst we were in England, which we did with our host, her sister and cousin. They have quite a collection of postcards between them and we liked picking out cards to send which showed typically British images. Our favourite was a postcard of William and Kate; the closest we got to meeting any Royalty whilst on our visit!

During our stay, on 9th September 2015, Her Majesty The Queen became Britain’s longest serving monarch, having been on the throne for 63 years and 7 months. This surpasses the reign of her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria. We were really interested to learn more about Queen Elizabeth II and her reign and lots of the newspapers had special editions on this day. We were also very excited to hear that Royal Mail have released a limited edition First Class Definitive stamp in regal purple. The stamp is usually red but will stay purple for 12 months to mark this historic occasion – cool!

Of course wherever we are in the world we like to check out the mail boxes and no trip to the UK would be complete without seeing some of those iconic red post boxes! We were lucky to see a few during our visit, including a traditional pillar box, a very old post box in ">Birmingham, and even a miniature replica (almost the perfect size for us!).

Our favourites though were these two very special gold post boxes in Stratford-upon-Avon. Royal Mail has painted more than 100 of its post boxes gold to celebrate every GB gold medal won during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The post boxes will remain permanently gold to mark the achievements of the athletes and the historic Games – wow! These two are in honour of the appropriately named paralympian rower James Roe.

We loved our day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we enjoyed all things Shakespeare, including visiting the Shakespeare Centre and Shakespeare’s Birthplace, posing with a statue of Hamlet, meeting a giant Shakespeare teddy and stocking up on British souvenirs! We also enjoyed watching boats in the sunshine on the canal.

On the final day of our visit, we were treated to a trip to Cadbury World in Birmingham, home of the world famous Cadbury chocolate!

As soon as we got out of the car, we could smell the delicious chocolate in the air! There was plenty of chocolate to be found inside of course, as well as the chance to make some new chocolatey friends; the Cadbury Buttons owl, a purple and white cow and even Bertie Bassett himself!

Phew, what an exciting trip! We had a great time visiting the UK and can’t wait to go back again soon.

Our heartfelt thank you to Sophie (aka FlyingGiraffe) for hosting the little guys and taking them on so many adventures!

Good news, everyone! After a short hiatus, the Little Mail Carriers have written back from the UK, where they were hosted by Sophie (aka FlyingGiraffe). They loved it so much that we’ve had to break their stay in 2 posts! :) You can read all about the first part of their journey below, and stay tuned for more adventures in Leicestershire!

Hello again, everyone!

In September we visited the UK, staying in the county of Leicestershire, in the East Midlands region of England. We stayed in a village and our first job on arrival was to help in our host’s vegetable garden, where we picked home-grown produce such as rhubarb, tomatoes and some purple carrots! We found out that traditionally all carrots were purple; the modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until the end of the 16th century by Dutch growers – interesting! We especially enjoyed climbing up the apple tree to pick some lovely English apples which we then used to bake (and eat!) a delicious apple cake; it was worth all of our hard work!

Bitten by the baking bug, we also helped to make and decorate some delicious vanilla cupcakes which we sold at a charity bake sale held at our host’s workplace to raise money for the charity Jeans for Genes. We even helped make some little jeans out of fondant icing to decorate the cupcakes; they suit Little Paulo don’t you think?!

It was great to visit our host’s office; she works part time at an architectural company. Whilst we were there, we were interested to look at some drawings. Little Ana also helped answer the phone and Little Paulo had a go at some audio typing – it’s harder than it looks!

We enjoyed exploring the Leicestershire countryside, including going on lots of autumnal walks with our host’s dog, a Jack Russell named Ruby, who helped us sniff out some brilliant conkers! Public footpaths in England are marked with distinctive yellow signs so you always know which way to go!

Apparently Leicestershire is well known for many foods, including Red Leicester cheese, Stilton cheese and Pork Pie from the town of Melton Mowbray. Pork Pies are a traditional British meat pie made of chopped meat and pork jelly sealed in a crust pastry. They were tasty but very filling for little people like us!

Our host’s local town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch has lots of interesting things to see and do and we really enjoyed our visit to Ashby Castle, originally a Norman Manor House which is now in ruins. There is a tower to climb and an underground passage to walk through. To round off our visit, we visited the gift shop where we bought postcards of the castle (of course!) and some very special English Heritage stamps which feature images of the castle and are especially designed for use on international postcards – perfect!

Their adventure will continue in a few days… stay tuned!