Postcrossing Blog

A little while ago, Clarisse (aka Cstar9) managed to interview Kirsten Lubach, and we’re pleased to get the chance to share that now and introduce everyone to Kirsten’s work. Kirsten Lubach is an accomplished designer and engraver based in Vienna, Austria. As an engraver, she contributed to her first postage stamp in 2006. She has designed stamps for the Austrian national postal service annually since 2012.

Clarisse learned about Kirsten Lubach’s work via Sibylle (Robin67), so thank you to her as well for drawing this artist to our attention! So without further ado, over to Clarisse’s interview with Kirsten…

How did you begin engraving postage stamps?

I was trained by a master engraver who himself worked in the field of stamp creation. So, when I got the chance to work for the Austrian State Press, which was in charge of producing post stamps, I took it.

But actually, I had already tried to engrave my first post stamp, when I was an apprentice, as a Christmas gift for my father, who is a philatelist.

How does a stamp’s small size affect your artistic approach?

The size of a post stamp of course affects the approach: it shouldn’t be too detailed, as the lines would accumulate into a dark, unrecognizable “something.”

On the other hand, the post stamp has to show the topic or motif clearly. It transports a message and is an ambassador of its country: sometimes not an easy task!

When you have chosen a subject, what does research look like for you?

Research is of utmost importance for me.

For the subject of the sea, I visited the sea and coast, made drawings, sketches, and photos, did research in Natural Historic Museums, aquariums, in books and on the internet.

I love researching not only because of the topic but also because of meeting interesting people and getting to know stories and anecdotes related to the topic.

Several times a year, you host a Philately Day at your studio. Where did that idea originate, and what do you enjoy about it?

Philately Day was actually started by the Austrian Post itself. They visited my workshop and were so delighted about the location that they asked me if I would open the workshop for Philately Day.

In 2024, the event will be held four times a year (more info here). The Austrian Post puts up a little stand in my workshop and sells their products.

Additionally, I invented for this event special post stamps and specially designed and engraved copper print cards for sale.

I like Philately Day a lot. People drop by for a visit, talk about philately and other things, have a look at the workshop – it’s like a little party of friends coming over. When I decided to give Philately Day a break after the first two years, everybody was so sad that I had to change my mind…

What is your personal relationship to postal mail?

Postal mail is great! When I was young, I had several pen-friends and it was great writing and receiving mail. Unfortunately, it diminished over the years, so I was really delighted to hear of the Postcrossing community!

Postal mail is something special as it endures over time. It shows somebody’s care in choosing a nice card or paper and the right words, with nice handwriting and a beautiful post stamp on top, and then – finally – carrying it to a postbox nearby. That is much more work than sending a short notice by email or other digital messengers.

Post mail has a soul! And papers and cards are such great stuff to work with.

What is a hobby you enjoy when you’re not making art?

I like hiking, yoga, watching birds, and playing the double bass when I need a change.

How does a sense of place (being in Vienna/Austria) inform your artwork?

Austria is a great country to live in. Vienna is a city with a lot of different aspects: the Natural History Museum is one of the top-ranking museums and perfect for research and detailed motifs. I have been drawing there since 2000.

On the other hand, you find great ornamental art on houses in Vienna from imperial times. That’s a perfect surrounding for an engraver, as engraving has a lot to do with ornaments.

And last, it’s only an hour drive into nature: lakes, mountains, or whatever I need.

Can you share with us a decision you’ve made in your artistic career that has required courage, or a trust in the unknown?

Oh, yes!

In 2021, I got a phone call from a colleague who wanted to retire. He asked me if I would take over his machines and his clients. Immediately I said “yes!” without thinking – because I knew, if I wouldn’t do it, his great work and workshop would disappear, because there was no other engraver left.

After I had made this decision, it became clear that it wasn’t so easy: I needed a new, bigger workshop, and the big machines had to be moved by special movers. It was a completely new start for me, with all the typical bureaucracy involved.

In the beginning, I was unsure if it would turn out nicely, but it did. And nowadays I am already known as “the engraver from the Ungargasse.”

What is next for you as an artist/engraver?

Good question. Last autumn I started teaching engraving at a vocational school for goldsmiths, so that´s a step into a future direction. I think it would be nice to educate an engraver apprentice for the future, but for several reasons, that is not an easy task. So, this is a project for the next 15 years.

As an artist: there are some post stamps waiting for me, and I would love to publish my children’s book this year. We’ll see. The days are – as always – too short!

Thank you as always to Clarisse for arranging and conducting this interview, and to Kirsten for being kind enough to share her answers and some of the images used to illustrate the post! If you’re curious to learn more, you can check out Kirsten’s website, check out her work in this gallery… and if you read German, there’s also more info in an article here.

And now, for a very special giveaway! Robin67 has kindly offered to send 3 viewcards from Wien/Vienna, each franked with Kirsten Lubach’s latest stamp featuring the rare white Baroque donkey!

For a chance to receive one, leave a comment below and tell us about a stamp from your country that you’ve used recently. The giveaway will be open for one week, after which we’ll randomly pick 3 winners and contact them by email. Good luck!

The writing prompts invite 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!

This month’s prompt is a suggestion that I found myself pondering—have you ever daydreamed about going to the Olympics? It was never a dream I was interested in, because I was really no good at sport except maybe rounders.

For me, if I was being realistic, obviously I’d get nowhere near the Olympics at all. Even as a kid I wasn’t really into any sports that could’ve led in that direction. I wasn’t a bad sprinter, and I was pretty speedy on my bike, but I didn’t pursue either of those in any kind of structured way.

If I could wish myself into some aptitude and just pick a sport that I think looks cool, I’d have to head to the Winter Olympics and go with figure skating, though! I was always mesmerised by that as a kid, and in my teens/early twenties I had an online friend who was obsessed with skaters like Johnny Weir (I remember his exhibition skate to Lady Gaga’s Poker Face very well!).

Of course it’s not realistic—I think I’ve only ever been skating three times in total! So now it’s over to you: what sport would you do in the Olympics? Do we have any actual Olympians on Postcrossing? We’d love to hear from you, on your postcards this month or in the comments!

Every so often I’ve been reviewing books for the blog, but this time I’ve got a bit of a change for you! I recently played a short game called Catto’s Post Office which I knew some postcrossers would be interested in, so I made sure to grab some screenshots along the way so I could show you all how cute it is.

First things first: Catto’s Post Office is available only on PC, via Steam. It’s a really short game (I completed it in under an hour, including all of the achievements), and it’s definitely suitable for kids as well. It can be played using keyboard and mouse or on controller: I played on controller and found the controls all very easy and intuitive, especially since there’s no need for precise controls or quick reactions: all round it’s pretty accessible and easy to play. I think the only thing I had difficulty finding was the button you have to press to meow—which isn’t very important!

The game takes place across one day, and follows the small adventures of its protagonist, Catto, the small town’s postal worker. Most of the story is very simple: pick up a package at the post office, and go to deliver it to the right place. The town is very small, so even if you get lost you’re probably not far astray, and there is a street sign pointing the various directions, and a map, near the post office.

Each delivery introduces you to different characters, or gives you a chance to talk to others and complete little sidequests or find little secrets. One example is the cat who asks you to find his parcel that he’s lost somewhere: it isn’t far away and he does give you a clue where he might have left it, but it gives you a chance to explore a bit more and look around. My bet is that it’d be fun to play it with a child who would need to think about it a bit more!

While you’re searching for the florist or café to deliver your parcels, or hunting for that lost package, you can also do little mini-games: kick a football into the net, clean up litter dropped on the floor… and find all the rubber duckies hidden around the town. It’s all very charming, and fun to wander around and discover the little touches like being able to knock flowerpots off surfaces (as cats are wont to do).

But there’s one more thing: it’s actually a special day for Catto. It’s his birthday! And everyone seems to have forgotten… Unsurprisingly, though, I promise there’s a happy ending, though Catto does spend a bit of time wondering why nobody remembers his birthday.

It’s a very cute little game, and even as an adult I had fun with the simplicity and sweetness of it, though I can definitely see having a lot more fun introducing a kid to it, since I think kids would find the story a bit more surprising and could engage in a lot of imaginative play while exploring. Older kids could play on their own, but I don’t think there’s anything too complicated, so it’s something that you could do with a younger child too, letting them choose where to go and what to do.

Now that our birthday shenanigans are over and we’ve recovered from the excitement of seeing so many of you join the Postcard Lounge and write postcards with us, we can finally jump to the next very important item on the agenda… World Postcard Day!

It’s time to reveal this year’s theme and design! So, without further ado, here’s 2026's World Postcard Day postcard, created by postcrosser Oce (aka ohhsayy):

This year’s theme is “Paper Bridges” — a way of thinking about postcards that feels almost obvious once you say it out loud, and yet is easy to forget in the everyday rush of writing and mailing. Every postcard begins as a small piece of paper… but once it is written, stamped, and sent, it becomes something much larger: a bridge between two people. “Paper Bridges” celebrates that little metamorphosis, the way a flat, ordinary object turns into a very special form of connection that spans the distance between sender and recipient.

Oce’s design plays with this idea beautifully, using folded-paper shapes, bold lettering, and bridge-like forms woven right into the typography. Arches and ribbons of paper curve across the card as if the letters themselves were built to connect one side to the other. The textured background will look particularly nice in textured paper, so if the service you use to print postcards offers that option, give it a try!

We first crossed paths with Oce at the Boston Stamp Show, where we got to see his work up close and were immediately drawn to it. He’s based in California, and if his name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he’s no stranger to the Postcrossing community: Oce has designed many postcards and special cancellation marks for meetups, and by now his playful, graphic style has become a familiar sight to quite a few of you already. We’re thrilled to have him bring that style to this year’s official postcard!

The design is, as usual, free to download, so you can have it printed locally or through any online service. Remember that every postcard posted on October 1st counts as a World Postcard Day card, so feel free to use this design or any other postcards you have on hand — they’re all good!

This year, we’re also trying something new: a black-and-white outline version of the postcard, designed for coloring in by hand. We first created a version like this a few years ago for a museum activity, and it was such a hit with young visitors that we thought it was time to share the idea with the wider community too — so that kids (and kids at heart!) everywhere can print it out (in uncoated paper), grab their favorite pencils or markers, and make the design their own on paper. You can find it alongside the regular design on the World Postcard Day website.

This will be the seventh World Postcard Day we celebrate together! For those of you who are new to it, October 1st is the anniversary of the first postcard ever sent, and has thus been chosen as the day to celebrate postcards. It’s a day that goes beyond Postcrossing — a day when everyone is invited to send a postcard to friends, family, children, people they admire, those that need a bit of support or cheering up… 😊

So… got any paper bridges to build this year? Whether it’s your first or seventh time celebrating, we hope you’re as excited as we are, and that this will be the best one yet!

PS: It’s completely fine if a design isn’t everyone’s personal style — artwork is subjective. And one of the nice things about World Postcard Day is that people can use any postcard to celebrate it: the official design, handmade postcards, other World Postcard Day themed designs or any postcard at all!

That said, please keep comments kind and constructive here. This year’s postcard was created by a member of our community and is being shared freely for anyone to use. It is a lot of work and it is offered in the spirit of a gift to the community.

Saying something isn’t your style is one thing… dismissive or hurtful comments about the artwork are another, and will be removed.

It’s our birthday today! Hurraaaaaaaay!! 🎉🥳🎉

Postcrossing turns 21 today, and it feels both completely impossible and somehow true. Twenty-one years of postcards crossing oceans, borders, mountains, deserts and kitchen tables… one small handwritten message at a time.

Postcrossing started back in 2005 with what was just a little experiment: what if strangers around the world could send each other real postcards, and the internet could help make that happen? All these years later, that idea is still going, carried by all of you: the people choosing postcards, writing messages, licking stamps, walking to postboxes, and making someone’s mailbox a little happier. Multiply that by 87 million postcards, and suddenly this little experiment becomes something much bigger: a worldwide web of connections made out of paper, handwriting, stamps, and friendly surprises.

Thank you for being part of Postcrossing, whether you joined yesterday or have been here since 2005. Thank you for every postcard sent, every kind message written, every meetup organized, every mailbox checked with hope… and every bit of patience when the mail takes the scenic route. A special thank you as well to everyone who spread the word, hosted a meetup, helped out on the forum or helped us keep the lights on!

To celebrate today, we’re also bringing back the Postcard Lounge! If you’d like to write some postcards in the quiet company of other postcrossers head over to the Postcard Lounge page. Bring some postcards, your favorite pen, maybe a cup of tea or coffee, and come write with us for a little while!

Here’s to 21 years of postcard magic, and to all the postcards still waiting to be written, sent, traveled, received and smiled over. Thank you for making this community what it is! 💙