Postcrossing Blog

The World Postcard Day (aka, the “postcardiest” day of the year) is next week already, but there’s still a little bit of time to get ready to celebrate the best day of the year! October 1st is the perfect day to spread smiles in the form of postcards, and if you need some inspiration, we do have a few tips to help you get ready and enjoy the day.

Naturally, the best activity for World Postcard Day is to send postcards, so you should make sure you have a nice little stash of both postcards and stamps. Is your favorite pen ready and writing smoothly? And have you made sure your address book is up-to-date? Now is a good time to check!

If you’re like us, you would like to make a list of whom you’re planning to send a postcard to. Think about the friends or relatives you treasure, your nice neighbors, the teachers that stoked your curiosity… Maybe you want to go over the contacts on your phone, and think of the people you haven’t seen in a while and who you could surprise with a postcard! Or perhaps there are local institutions that could use some cheering, like the firefighters in your area who faced fires or floods this year… If you have other good suggestions, write them down in the comments — we’d love to hear who you’ll be sending your postcards to.

By the way, remember last year, when Postcrossing’s website had the hiccups on World Postcard Day when everyone tried to send lots of postcards at the same time…? 😅 The project was not made for these peaks of activity, and it has trouble finding recipients when soooo many people are trying to send postcards at the same time. There are a couple of things you can do to help, though! First, if your account is currently set to inactive, consider setting it to active on the day to give the algorithm a few more addresses to chose from. And secondly, remember that in order to receive the World Postcard Day badge on your profile, you only need one postcard sent on October 1st to arrive to its destination… so if you notice the website is getting a little sluggish and you’ve already sent a handful of postcards, say a little prayer for the database and maybe write a postcard to a friend or relative instead. They’ll be happy you’re thinking of them on this special day, and the team here will be thankful you’re thinking of us too!

By the way, if you have little cousins or nephews, or maybe small children in your street or building, consider gathering them around for a mini-workshop on how to write their first postcard! You can all talk about how mail works, decorate and write postcards, and then take a little stroll to the mailbox together. Imagine how happy will they be when the postcards arrive! If you do this, please take pictures to share with us, award yourself five points and then pat yourself on the back with pride — you’re helping to raise a new generation of postcard writers! :)

This year, the World Postcard Day lands on a Saturday, which is brilliant as many of us have more free time on the weekends. I know many postcrossers are planning to attend local meetups (and there are quite a few taking place!), and I’m sure it’ll be special to celebrate this day with like-minded folks who love postcards as much as we do. 😊 There are also other events taking place, like museum workshops and special cancellation marks — check the World Postcard Day events page for the full list.

If you’re a little antsy to start celebrating the day and have a few postcards to spare, why not sending a one or two to your local media outlets, to let them know the World Postcard Day is coming on October 1st? Maybe they’ll pick up on the news, and mention the day on an article or video piece… wouldn’t that be brilliant?

And last but not least, remember that the “traditional” meal for the World Postcard Day (as suggested by postcrosser Bonnie Jeanne aka postmuse) is ravioli, because they look like small postage stamps!

We hope you have a lovely World Postcard Day next week… and until then, don’t forget to do some wrist exercises to build up strength! 💪

Today is the day the new Postcrossing-themed stamp from Luxembourg makes its debut, in all its philatelic glory! Don’t their printed stamp sheets look pretty?

Ah… I wish teleportation existed already, so we could quickly buzz ourselves there to send a few postcards! 😍

On the September issue of PhilatéLux (the philatelic magazine from Post Luxembourg's), designer Stina Fisch gave a short interview, sharing a little bit about herself and her work on the Postcrossing stamp. Here is an excerpt of the page dedicated to the Postcrossing stamp:

This is not the first postage stamp you have designed. What did you find particularly challenging, and how did you overcome that?

One particular challenge was the extremely small format and the need to ensure that it would still be legible. I really wanted to get across the idea of the handwritten message and to express the serendipity of the Postcrossing project — that is, discovering something new and surprising without looking for it.

Do you write and send postcards yourself?

Yes, I love sending postcards because I love to receive them. I keep all my postcards, use them as bookmarks, and leave the postcard in the book when I‘ve finished it. I love coming across them years later. Is writing postcards still a thing? Sure, a text message does the same thing… but a handwritten note means a lot to me… the short walk to the postbox… and then the recipient’s delight at getting a personal message amid bills and flyers.

Congratulations to all Luxembourg postcrossers, and a big thank you to Post Luxembourg, for deeming the Postcrossing community worthy of this honor. The stamp is now available on their webshop, and we look forward to seeing it in postcards flying around the world. If you’re in Luxembourg, do send us some photos of the stamp — we’d love to see these in the hands of postcrossers, or close to one of your yellow postboxes!

They say “good things come in threes”… so after Luxembourg and Germany, here we are again to present you with the third Postcrossing-themed stamp of 2022, a lovely specimen from Estonia!

We like it a lot! 😍 A big happy postcard front and center, being carried around by birds! It’s a fun and quirky design, that I think radiates the joy one feels when sending or receiving a postcard.

The designer Triin Heimann is a familiar name in Estonian philately, having designed quite a few popular stamps on a variety of styles. Most notable, she is responsible for the Estonian Lunar New Year series, which has been published for over 10 years! Maybe we’re a little biased, but we think this Postcrossing stamp might be one of her most lively works yet.

The postage on this stamp is for international mail, and Omniva picked October 1st as their stamp launch date, which makes us extra happy as it is also World Postcard Day! And there will also be a cancellation mark and special First Day Postcard available on the day.

If you’re in or around Tallinn on that date, there will be a Postcrossing stamp launch event and meetup taking place at the conference room of the Original Sokos Hotel Viru, in the afternoon — including a mini-postcard fair, with illustrators, designers and publishers selling their postcards! Check out this topic for more details.

We’re excited to see all these happy new stamps making their way across the world… and also to think of them in the albums of philatelic collectors, standing out a little bit from all the other stamps around them.

It’s not everyday one gets an invitation to learn more about the history of printing presses and how they work… so when the invitation came, the Little Mail Carriers jumped into their envelope and made their way to the north of Germany, where the newly revamped Museumsdruckerei Hoya (Hoya’s Printing Museum) is re-opening today! Here they are, to tell you all about what you can discover inside.

Being Mail Carriers, we hold many paper goods in our hands every day. These are letters and postcards in various sizes and colors with all kinds of stamps on them – lots of printed and written paper. Like thousands of postcrossers in the world, we are fascinated by stationery, paper and other printed matters. So are our hosts Claas (aka Speicher3) and Christine (aka Reisegern), who have shown us today how the printed letters and images have been applied to paper since ages.

They invited us to come with them to Hoya, a small town on the river Weser in Northern Germany.

Once we arrive in the letterpress printing office Museumsdruckerei Hoya, we are welcomed by Michael Linke, who built up an amazing collection of printing presses and types over thirty years.

Right at the entrance of the museum, we spot a figurine on a wooden construction. Michael, who’s that?

“That’s Johannes Gutenberg”, Michael explains. “The figurine is placed on a reproduction of the Gutenberg printing press. Gutenberg is known as the inventor of modern printing.” While we drink some coffee and eat butterkuchen, a typical northern German cake, Michael tells us about the history of printing:

"Already several thousand years ago, simple printed (stamped) seals were used in Egypt and Mesopotamia. More progressive printing technologies were developed in China more than a thousand years ago. For printing books, in the beginning whole pages were carved into wooden blocks, later on moveable letters were invented. That made printing much easier, though for printing something in Chinese, a lot of different characters were needed.

“In Europe, books were mainly multiplied in monasteries by copyists — all handwritten. Until at the end of the Middle Ages, in the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg triggered a gigantic media revolution. He used moveable letters made from new materials, found a new ink recipe and invented a special printing press. He combined known printing technologies and his inventions to an efficient printing system. This allowed inexpensive, high-quality mass media production for the first time. The Gutenberg printing system spread across Europe and the whole world.”

But what are moveable letters? Michael encourages us to explore the printing workshop, where we find an aisle full of drawers.

Opening them, we discover an overwhelming amount of moveable letters in different sizes and fonts. Yay, let’s take some of them and build a word! It’s a bit complicated, as all those letters are mirrored.

Michael lets us know: “Before the invention of digital printing, all printed texts were composed by typesetters. They put every single character of the texts line by line into composing sticks, which were then transferred to the printing press.” Wow, what an effort! Can you imagine how many types a typesetter has to handle for a daily newspaper?

In another drawer we find images that look like rubber stamps, but they are made of metal instead of rubber, some very old ones even are woodcuts.

Let’s take some and see what they look like when they are printed! We’ll combine them with the text we composed in the composing stick. For our first printing experiments, we use a very simple printing press. We put our design in there, add printing ink, lay a sheet of paper on top, close the lid and press firmly.

That’s fun! Look, the images at the bottom of the page seem to be postal stamps. Michael, would that be possible? Michael explains: “Of course. Stamps were also printed with so-called printing clichés (that’s the name of those images).”

Does this mean, we could print our own stamps in this printing workshop? 🤔 “Good idea!”, Michael says, “We can print your personal stamps here. Did you iron your uniforms? I’ll take a photo of you.” With those photos, a metal cliché is being produced.

We are so excited! The cliché is fixed in a big printing press. Now we have to work very accurately, because if the height of the image is off by even a tenth of a millimeter, it can make a difference that’s visible in the quality of the print.

Can we now print? “I think you forgot something”, says Michael. “You need to grab some printing ink.”

Oh gosh, that’s some thick, sticky stuff. Michael smirks and shows us his totally paint-smeared work coat. “Indeed. If you get that onto your uniform, you won’t be able to remove the stains ever again.”

For this printing press, we don’t need to hand-ink the composition. Instead, we put the ink onto the rollers of the printing press and can print our stamps. Oh, they are wonderful, aren’t they? While the ink is drying, we have some snack and listen to Michael, who tells us more about printing history.

“Gutenberg’s invention initiated meaningful social developments. Through the mass printing of texts, knowledge, information and opinions could suddenly be spread much easier, more widely and without the control of state and church. Just like today with the internet, many more people were able to access knowledge or publish their own texts through the printing press than ever before.”

Enlightening! We never thought about all that.

Our prints are dry now. But something’s missing. Our stamps cannot be taken apart from each other. So more accurate work is needed for perforating our stamps with a vintage perforating machine.

Done! Now we can send out postcards with our own decorative stamps in addition to the normal postage.

Nowadays, most printed matters are being produced with offset or laser printing technologies. We enjoyed our visit to the museum printing office with all those fascinating machines, strange sounds and odors.

Thank you Michael, we love our stamps. What’s next? “Let’s grab some ice cream and enjoy the evening on the banks of the river Weser.” A great suggestion, Michael!

Information: Michael decided to commit his collection to the public, and now the newly founded association Museumsdruckerei Hoya “Zwiebelfisch” is responsible for running the place. Speicher3 and Reisegern are members of the association. The museum’s website (in German) is www.museumsdruckerei-hoya.de, and you can also find it on Facebook: Museumsdruckerei Hoya (no login required!).

Our huge thank you to Claas, Christine and Michael, for this fantastic tour and giveaway! The Museum is opening today again after a long break, and we’re excited to see this beautiful collection be shared with the public, so that people can learn from it and make beautiful things. Hurray!

Reisegern and Speicher3 would like to give away five of the stamp sheets* that were printed with the Little Mail Carriers to the readers of the Postcrossing Blog. If you’d like to win one of these, leave a comment below sharing a memory concerning letterpress machines, suggesting what the next thing we should print should be or what we should write about on our website! The giveaway will run for a week, and Paulo’s random number generator will select five winners by this time next Saturday. Good luck!

(*) Please note that these are Cinderella stamps and cannot be used for postage on your outgoing mail.

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 writing prompt is all about your favourite outfit, a prompt suggested by Meliora's on the forum! Whether you prefer style or function, your clothes can say so much about you…

It’s September, so I’m starting to look forward to colder nights after a scorcher of a summer here in the UK. That means it’s time for my favourite pair of pyjamas! Okay, the beginning of September might be a little soon for them… but perhaps by the end of September I’ll be snuggling into them…

I do have some great outfits for lounging around the house, going out, and fancy occasions, of course. But none of them beat out my hedgehog pyjamas, which are slightly fuzzy to the touch, very cosy, and really adorably cute. My wife got them for me the Christmas before last, and I promptly got a couple of extra pairs for when they wear out—I’ve been burned by that before, and greatly miss my rainbow-coloured giraffe pyjamas!

So how about everyone else? Are you joining my pyjama party, or are you too fond of your hiking gear? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget that you can use this as a prompt when writing your postcards this month!