Postcrossing Blog

It’s that wonderful time of the year again when postcards become more than just a happy surprise in your mailbox — they transform into books and help for those who struggle with reading! We’re excited to kick off the 12th edition of the “Cards for Literacy” campaign, celebrating over a decade of partnership with Deutsche Post and helping many people in Germany improve their literacy skills throughout all these years. Let’s keep this December tradition alive and thriving!

If you’re in Germany, it’s time to organize your stationery and make sure you have all the postcards and stamps you need! Every card you send in December (and that’s registered by February 28, 2025) will contribute to this meaningful cause.

As if making a difference weren’t rewarding enough, you’ll also have a chance to win some neat prizes: one €100 voucher and five €50 vouchers for the Deutsche Post Online Shop. The more cards you send, the more chances you’ll have to win. In March 2025, Paulo will tally the total number of postcards sent and funds raised, and the lucky winners will be randomly selected and announced. Last year, we raised an incredible €12,078.30 for Stiftung Lesen, all thanks to your efforts!

If you’re outside Germany, you’re still an essential part of the campaign. By registering the postcards you receive from Germany quickly, you help senders mail their next cards sooner, keeping the momentum going.

Stiftung Lesen continues to do vital work improving literacy for children, adolescents, and refugee families learning German. Literacy skills can open doors and change lives, and we’re honored to support their mission.

And now, all that is left to do is for us to come together and make the 12th year of this campaign truly special. Whether you’re sending or registering postcards, every small action adds up to something extraordinary!

P.S. Postcrossing respects your privacy and will not share your personal information. Full details of the campaign can be found here (in German).

We’ve been biting our tongues to share the news with you, and now it’s finally time: bpost will launch five new Postcrossing-themed stamps to celebrate Postcrossing’s 20th anniversary next year! 🎉 The stamps come in a special stamp sheet that looks like a postcard:

Isn’t that clever? 🤩 The stamp sheet was designed by Geert Wille and features the 2 main languages of the country. On the stamps, you can see the several steps of the journey of a postcard, from writing to arriving in someone’s hands across the world — like a “paper airplane”, flying around and connecting us all!

The stamp issue will be on sale from 16th June 2025 and we know there’s still a long time to go… but we can’t wait for next summer to see these stamps in the postcards sent from Belgium!

It’s Autumn in the north hemisphere, and trees all around us are putting on their most beautiful display of the year. It’s impossible not to notice all the vibrant reds, yellows and browns of fallen leaves, practically begging to be brought in and turned into something special. So when we stumbled on Beemo’s (aka wild_grazer) stylish postcards on Reddit, we asked her if she would like to write a short tutorial for the community. Here she is, with a step-by-step guide, inviting you to turn the surrounding magic into unique postcards!

First of all, it is time to go outside and collect some leaves. They should have some veins and have an interesting shape, as these are the main things that will create an interesting print. It doesn’t matter if the leaf is a bit dried out as you can soak it in some water for about 5 minutes and it will be soft again. Just make sure it is not broken. Clean the leaves and pat them dry.

You don’t need any fancy tools for this tutorial. You can use whatever you have available. You can use a pencil to make some guides so you know where to exactly put the leaf. I just put a little dot in the middle.

Apply a thin layer of paint on the leaf on the side with the veins, using a sponge brush or even a normal sponge. I used linocut printing ink, but acrylic or gouache probably works just fine. Make sure to execute this step and the next ones quickly as otherwise the paint will dry out.

You could add a little bit of water to your paint. This will create more of a watercolour effect. Without the water the print will be more refined. You can experiment with the amount of water and amount of paint that you apply for varying effects.

Turn over the leaf and place it on your card. Try to place it down without moving it as this will create stains.

Cover the leaf with a sheet of paper that fully covers the leaf and press it down/rub firmly. Normal printing paper would be too thin for this step, try to use paper of about 150–250gsm. You can also use a sheet of rubber such as for linocutting, which is what I did.

Remove the covering paper or rubber and leaf and let the card dry. The last step is to decorate the back however you want. And you’re done!

Et voilà! I hope this inspires some of you to go out there and appreciate the beauty of this time of the year. There are not many deciduous trees where I live, so I’m planning to give it a try with herbs from the garden, perhaps using light ink on dark paper. If you decide to give it a try, come share your results on the handmade postcards and mail art forum topic!

Every so often, we do a little spotlight about a Postcrossing member, and this time we reached out to EvanescentHour, who lives in Illinois, USA. Without further ado, here are her answers to our questions!

How did you get started sending postcards? What is your earliest memory of them?

I actually didn’t get into postcarding until 2021. So my earliest memory is still fairly recent. My first postcarding experience was driving around with my mother, trying to find a good place that sells postcards. For some reason, I remember that I was reading 'Small Favors' by Erin A Craig in the check out line.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

In 2020 I started getting super into travel and learning about countries outside of my own. I liked researching places that I wanted to travel too, like The Netherlands and Norway. While doing this research I remembered that when I was around six or seven years old I had a penpal from Ireland. I thought that I would get back into the penpaling hobby but, unfortunately, the phone number that my grandma had called to get me set up with a penpal is now defunct. So I started searching for other websites and services that help set people up with penpals. That’s how I came across Postcrossing. It wasn’t penpaling so I was a bit skeptical at first, but I love collecting things so I thought that I would give it a go.

What got me hooked was the community. I love seeing other people’s handwriting, how they use stickers and washi tape, and how they structure sentences. I enjoy going to the forums and talking to users there as well.

What’s one way that postcards have changed your life for the better?

Postcards have been super important to me. 2020–2022 had been very rough years for me and sending postcards helped brighten my day a little bit. They were something to make me smile when I felt like I didn’t have many other reasons to do so. They also helped me connect with my mother and grandmother.

Have you met any other members in real life?

I have! I went to a postcarding meetup with my mother and grandmother. It was an amazing experience, lots of friendly people and we had a nice lunch in this local cafe. The atmosphere was very relaxed and quaint and everyone seemed to connect right away. I also found out that I had met one of the people there BEFORE the actual meetup; we had talked to each other at an Eivør concert about two months prior to the Postcrossing meetup.

Have you been surprised by any place that you have received a postcard from or sent a postcard to?

My favorite Postcrossing coincidence is that I was browsing for users from the Bahamas to request a direct swap from and the profile that I clicked on, ended up being the user whose address I pulled!

I was also surprised to have gotten one from Guam.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

My favorite post card that I have received is the Blue Man Group postcard from this photo of my collection. I don’t have a close up picture of it but it has a special place in my heart because my mom surprised me with it one day. She knew that I was getting super into the hobby and when she visited Chicago she sent it back to me as a little memento. My mother has very recently passed away and so it’s nice to have this small piece of her with me.

As for postcards that I got from Postcrossing there are two that I really love and can’t choose between; there is this bat maxicard. I adore bats, they are my favorite animals and this is the first maxicard I’ve received. It’s also pretty new!

I also really love this one. Bellatrix is one of my all time favorite characters so it was super cool to get a postcard with her on it!

What is it your favorite part of the Postcrossing process?

I think that my favorite part of the process is actually walking to the mailbox! Both to send postcards and to check to see if I received any. I especially love doing so in the springtime when I can get a whiff of the lilacs and wet grass.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies or collections?

I like to say that I collect collections because I have so many from rocks to fandom merch. But my favorite collection is my CD and Vinyl collection. I have over 500 CD’s (my goal is to get 1000 of them). I have CD’s across almost all genres, my favorites are Symphonic Metal and Folk Metal.

My favorite hobbies aside from postcarding are creative writing and scrapbooking. Writing in particular; I have been making up fantasy stories since I could pick up a pencil. I love writing horror and fantasy the most and hope to be a published author one day. For now I share my stories with the world through fanfiction and have made a lot of friends that way.

Is there anything else that you are passionate about?

Music and nature are my passions. I also have an interest in bats, the goth subculture, storms, Dutch culture, and Swedish culture. I have autism so I get super super invested in all of these topics.

Music and the goth subculture are probably the two things that I am most invested in. I have a goal to discover and listen to one band from every country in every continent. So far I have listened to one band in every country in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America and one band in every US state. I am working on discovering one band from each Oceanic country.

The goth subculture has also been very important to me. For the longest time I had trouble making friends because I never really tried to 'mask’ my autism. The goth scene in itself is a subversion to societal norms and so I, already more of an outcast so to speak, found a home in that scene. I love the fashion and the music. I love the aesthetics. And I found that after putting on the corset and the choker, my confidence skyrocketed. I started making more friends both fellow goths and outsiders who were curious about why I dress the way I do.

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!

I write a lot about Wales, where my family come from and where I went to university, but this week’s theme allows me to give my current home a bit further north a little love. This time, the prompt is about where you live!

I recently got myself a bicycle to give myself a bit more range for travelling, meaning I’ve been able to go to the library a lot more frequently, run errands without needing my wife to drive me around, etc, etc. Which led to my discovery that my area has a lovely network of cycle paths! They start in convenient spots off the main roads and they’re well-maintained, which is already a lot better than I remember it being back when I lived in Cardiff, but they’re also objectively lovely places to be. The paths are surrounded by trees, and you can hear streams trickling past, hear the birds, and see squirrels scampering swiftly across the path. A bit of reading around told me that they’re actually intended as wildlife corridors, allowing animals to move around the urban landscape better by connecting up different parts of the landscape.

I didn’t know anything about the cycle paths before getting a bike, so it’s been lovely to explore and figure out where they all go. Sometimes I just pick one and follow it just for the fun of exploration!

Now it’s your turn! What do you love about the area you live in? I’m sure there’s something! You can talk about it in the comments here, or write about it on your postcards this month.