Postcrossing Blog

Some time ago, Ana chose a number of the handmade cards from the forum to highlight on the blog. That forum topic is still going strong (do share your own handmade cards there too!) — and now it’s my turn to choose some of the gorgeous creations to share.

Let’s start off with a smile! These animals with googly eyes from Caro (aka Pigglet) really made me smile. Especially the sheep, with the mismatched eyes!

These lovely images introduced me to the concept of etegami, a Japanese art form which involves the combination of words and images to create a simple postcard. Etegami isn’t about creating the most beautiful or skilled picture, but about expressing yourself. These examples were made by Hikari (aka hikarin).

In the previous post, we’ve shown off some of the collage postcards people make. These ones made from a fashion catalogue by Nadja (aka Nadjafee) grabbed my eye — there’s a fairytale waiting to be told here, I think!

Öne (aka Radieschen)'s collages caught my attention right away as well: so much texture and colour!

We always really love to see unusual postcards decorated with different kinds of crafts, and here’s a lovely one decorated with batik fabric and crochet! It was made by Giffen (aka cutetaiki), from Indonesia. I do crochet myself, and can just imagine how interesting this is to the touch as well.

Since I just mentioned a card that should be interesting to the touch as well, this one’s something that engages other senses too: Tamara (aka tamara84) created a postcard by creating a sticker from a cross-stitched image, and then added a little lavender oil so that the card is scented as well!

Olga (aka OlgaMartik)'s beautiful embroidery sailboat had me wondering where exactly it’s going, and I really liked those wave effects!

Since we’re speaking of embroidery, here are some that really made the team smile. Ksenia (aka Xute) took up the needle… but found it less relaxing than hoped.

Inspired by Ksenia’s example, Ana (aka meiadeleite) has given it a try as well!

Turning to other crafts, Hanna (aka _Hawkwind_) invited everyone to guess about the owner of this striking silhouette… I think I know, do you?

Tatyana (aka Tatyana-Levina) has done some lovely (and personal) drawings for postcards, which I just couldn’t resist sharing as well.

I loved the idea of using maps to make postcards, so Christa (aka Chrizzie)'s globes are a favourite. It’s a really effective look!

And that’s a lovely note to end on… so let’s let all our adventures begin! And if you make your own postcards, we’d all love to see them.

Good news, everyone: Postcrossing has a shiny new forum! 🎉🎉🎉

Have you ever been to the forum? It’s a place for postcrossers to play games, arrange meetings, do swaps or just chat with each other, cementing the community bonds that tie us together. We love the idea of a forum… but for a long time now, we’d fallen out of love with the software we chose for it 15 years ago. It stopped being developed just a few years after we had installed it, and quickly started to show its age and limitations. The need for a separate login from Postcrossing itself was a hassle, and the lack of responsive design or support for languages that didn’t use Latin scripts were also issues that drove people away from it over the years… A technological upgrade that made the forum easier to use and in tune with the times was long overdue.

So over the past couple of years, we gave different softwares a go, finally settling on one that seemed to fit most of our requirements. We tested it first with a group of enthusiastic postcrossers, and then last month had a trial run with a larger group of active forum members, to understand how the forum would perform with more people on it. We were pleased with the results, and are therefore happy to announce that the new forum is finally live!

Some of the features of the new forum include the integrated login with your Postcrossing account, notifications when someone mentions you, group messages, aaaaall the emojis, easy upload of images, support for languages in different scripts, responsive design, wikis… 🥰 The list goes on and on!

Even if you’re not a “forum person”, we encourage you to login and take a look — maybe you’ll find a cozy place to chat with others in your language or geographical community, play a game of Tag with postcards of a certain topic, geek out about postcards or stamps (or maybe knitting or anime and manga!), talk about your favorite parts of Postcrossing or just generally hang out with other postcard lovers out there. Don’t be shy! It’s a fresh start, and everyone is welcome!

We hope you enjoy the new home for the Postcrossing community as much as we do — see you there! 👋

Many of you know that Postcrossing has its own forum, but perhaps the newest members haven’t noticed it was there… so we decided to properly introduce it to you on a blog post!

In the early days of Postcrossing, the community felt the need for a place to share ideas and contact with other members directly… and so the forum was added to the project, where it has been ever since. The forum is kept running by mundoo, soilian, geminiscp, jetske and swan, as well as many other volunteers who help guide the members in their own local communities.

In the forum, postcrossers share experiences, ask questions, organize meetings, play postcard games, look for special postcards, talk about their favourite artists and postcard series… among many other things!

To get the new members started, here are some of our favorite threads or sub-forums:

• This postcard made my day
• Bingo!
• Where to get postcards?
• Upcoming meetups
• How do you store your postcards?
• All about UNESCO sites and postcards
• Postcard and stamp art
• Lotteries
• Local community pages (where you can write in your own language)
• Amazing coincidence
• Postal Information and stamps

This is just a very small sample… the forum has over a million posts! So if you’re interested in exploring them, head over there! :)

Please note that you’ll have to open a new account to start using the forum, since it is a separate website – your regular Postcrossing login and password will not work there.

PS – Do you have any favorite threads? Share it in the comments!

Everyone does silly things once in a while… and postcrossers are no exception. So we were thrilled to discover a thread on the forum about the little accidents that happen in Postcrossing, and had a lot of fun reading through it! Here are some of our favourite accidents:

Daisy_chain says:

I heard of a friend that someone wanted to send postcards from when they where on holiday and threw them into a red “mailbox” only to find out a while later that these wheren’t actual mailboxes but trash cans!

Lori wrote:

Another time I thought I was writing to a person who liked cat cards so I told them all about my cats etc. Then I realized it was a person who was afraid of cats! So I had to put an address label over the address. Luckily I didnt send the card out!

Zeroday says:

I had a stack of cards ready to take to the Post office. Official cards and some RR swaps. They were sitting on the edge of my sofa with a throw pillow next to them. I grabbed the whole bunch of cards and headed to the Post office. About 10 days later for some reason I reached over and picked up the throw pillow and saw one card that had slipped in between the pillow and sofa. It was a private swap card and when I saw it I was horrified. I mailed it and send a very “I’m sorry” u2u to the person…We both got quite a laugh out of it…

Swollib wrote:

A couple of times I’ve put some of my received postcards in my postcards-to-send pile and sent them out accidentally. Both times the post office was nice enough to return them to me!

What about you? Do you have any interesting postal stories or accidents? Leave a comment below or on the forum thread with your stories!

Hello everybody!
Here is a small update to let you know that Postcrossing forum was upgraded to the latest version. Some new features:

• The country flags are back!
• A notepad is now available
• The avatars’ bug was fixed, and now the avatar of the sender is included in the U2Us
• If you receive a new U2U while browsing the forum, an alert will be displayed
• Other small bugs were also fixed

Enjoy!