Postcrossing Blog

Have you ever heard of the Graceful Envelope Contest? Maybe you’ve seen some of these stunning envelopes before…

The contest is held every year by the Washington (DC) Calligraphers Guild and open to worldwide entries. Participants of all ages are invited to use their calligraphy and artistic skills to interpret a given theme on an envelope, which is then mailed to the Guild. Bonus points for using stamps that fit the topic!

This year, the theme is Communication:

“Ever since Benjamin Franklin became America’s first Postmaster General, many of our most important messages arrived inside an envelope. Now your challenge is to design the outside of an envelope to highlight this—or any other—mode of communication. Your Graceful Envelope could honor the mail or the internet; the telegraph, telephone or television; person-to-person conversation or whatever kind of communication inspires your imagination.”

The deadline for 2016 is March 28th… so gather your stamps, envelopes and colouring pens, and 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 on their Flickr page. A big thank you scribefriend from bringing this wonderful contest to our attention!

Woohoo!! We’ve just reached the amazing milestone of 30 million registered postcards, and couldn’t be prouder of every single one of you! Isn’t 30 million a lovely round number? :)

And now ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: postcard number 30,000,000 (DE-4221494) was sent by Postkartensammler in Germany on May 14th and registered today at 00:27 (UTC) by blooaum in Portugal. Hurray!

All spots on our guessing game were taken quite some time in advance, and the big winner was Licena, who picked the exact minute that postcard was registered. Congratulations, your new set of Urban Sketching postcards and the code for your shiny MOO postcards are on their way!

The other four lucky postcrossers who came the closest to the right time were olgaga98, Lara_and_Xavier, ThomW and vsemsnyatsasny – well done! You’ll all receive a pack of 20 postcards from MOO!

Both the sender and the receiver will also receive a surprise pack of Everything is Connected, Keri Smith’s wonderful book of adventure postcards.

And last but not least, our big heartfelt thank you to our team of volunteers, to MOO for generously sponsoring this giveaway, and most of all to you – all of you who send postcards and take this project further with your enthusiasm!

Onwards to the next million — one postcard, and one smile at a time! :)

We’re fast approaching the highly anticipated milestone of 30 million postcards, and so it’s time to launch the traditional guessing contest! Hurray!

If you’re new to the game, it goes like this:

Every member has a chance to submit a bet for the day and time on which they think the postcard number 30 million will be registered. The bets need to be submitted on the contest page.

And of course, there are prizes for the best guesses, sponsored by MOO!

The postcrosser who guesses the exact minute when postcard number 30 million is registered wins a pack of 40 MOO postcards (20 original, 20 luxe) and a surprise set of 100 postcards from us.

But if you’re not the lucky one, don’t panic — we have more prizes! The 4 next best guesses (before or after the registering time) will also win a pack of 20 postcards from MOO.

Some rules: each time slot can only be chosen by one person, so the first person to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage, if you want, but only from the available time slots left. We will close the bets when there are 1000 postcards left to postcard 30,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

So… what are you waiting for? Fire up your spreadsheet or check your horoscope… but be quick to pick a time slot before we run out of them!

PS – If you’d like to order your postcards from MOO, don’t forget to follow the link to their special page for postcrossers, to get a 15% discount on your purchase! A small percentage of every purchase you make on MOO through that page is given back to Postcrossing – so with each pack of postcards you buy, you’re also helping the project. Win-win! :)

One postcard… two postcards… 25 million postcards! Boy, that escalated quickly^*!

We did a little math – did you know that if we lined 25 million postcards side by side, they would be enough to cover the distance between Lisbon and St. Petersburg, or between Los Angeles and Washington DC? That’s how many postcards we’ve all sent these past 9 years!

I know you’re all dying to know who did it, and here it is: postcard number 25 million (NL-2612179) was sent by LianneK in the Netherlands on August 5th and registered today at 11:02 (UTC) by linsi in Germany. Hurray!

Lepan was the big winner of our guessing game contest, since she guessed the correct date and time at which that postcard was registered – brilliant! You’ve won a pack of 40 postcards (20 classic, 20 luxe) from MOO and a surprise set of 100 lovely postcards!

The other four lucky postcrossers who came the closest to the right time were skliu, sunzhuxian, AnnLee and Olga86 – well done! You’ll all receive a pack of 20 postcards from MOO!

Both the sender and the receiver will also receive a surprise pack of Where’s Waldo? postcards!

A huge thank you to our team of volunteers, to MOO for sponsoring this giveaway, and most of all to you – all of you who send postcards and take part on this global postcard revolution!

Come on – let’s go fill some mailboxes with smiles, one postcard at a time! :)

Remember when we celebrated 20 million postcards last October? Well, 9 months have passed, and we’ve already sent five million postcards more! So it’s time to start the traditional guessing contest once again! :)

For those not familiar with the game, it goes like this:

Every member has a chance to submit a bet for the day and time on which they think the postcard number 25 million will be registered. The bets need to be submitted on the contest page.

And of course, there are prizes for the best guesses, sponsored by MOO!

The member who guesses the exact minute when postcard number 25 million is registered will win a pack of 40 MOO postcards (20 classic, 20 luxe) + a surprise set of 100 postcards.

But there’s more! If you’re not the lucky one, you could still win something: each of the 4 next best guesses (before or after the registering time) will also win a pack of 20 postcards from MOO!

Some rules: each time slot can only be chosen by one person, so the first person to pick that slot gets to keep it. You can change it at a later stage, if you want, but only from the available time slots left. We will close the bets when there are 1,500 postcards left to postcard 25,000,000. Check the contest page for more details.

So… what are you waiting for? Ask your lucky stars or open a spreadsheet to make your calculations… but be fast! Slots tend to run out quickly!

PS – MOO is having a 25% off sale until July 21st! If you follow the link to the special page for postcrossers, a small percentage of every purchase you make reverts towards Postcrossing – so with each pack of postcards you buy, you’re also helping the project. Win-win! :)