Postcrossing Blog

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 was suggested by iwritedeb! She suggested that we all write about our neighbourhoods, which seems like a great way to learn more about people all over the world! Where do you live, what’s it like, and is there anything unique about it?

I live in a pretty suburban area, but within a stone’s throw of farmland. If I look out of my window, I can see a hayfield which has recently been harvested. There’s a small farm nearby with geese, a field where a horse and a pony hang out together, and a lot of nice houses, each with their own garden. We’re not far from the town centre, but here it’s nice and quiet.

Often in the UK you don’t know your neighbours very well, but I like going for walks in the area, so people see me around and we know each other well enough to say hello. Strangely enough, my little corner of Yorkshire is full of Welsh people: there are two other Welsh families on our street, including a gentleman with a dog who is even keener about the rugby than I am (the man is, I mean, not the dog). I always joke that it’s because the weather in Yorkshire is so similar to the weather in Wales: it’s always raining!

My neighbourhood is kind of quiet and unexciting, but I’m sure you can all do better than that! You can write about your neighbourhoods in the comments right here, on the postcards you send out this month… or both! We’d love to hear from you.

We have a super special treat for you today! The Little Mail Carriers have visited the Postal History Foundation in Arizona (USA), and are here to show the important work they do there, bringing stamps (and excitement!) to classrooms. Let’s go!

The Postal History Foundation (PHF for short) is located just west of the University of Arizona, in a residential neighborhood in central Tucson. It’s a non-profit organization with a dual mission of research and education: they provide stamps and lessons to students across the country and the world! We were excited to hear about this cool initiative… so we invited ourselves over for a visit. 😊

The building was a church many decades ago but now holds a workroom, a contract US Postal Service station, a museum area, the philatelic sales area, and the education department… as well as millions of postage stamps! We were going to deliver some mail to the postmaster, but were immediately distracted by the beautiful old post office in their museum section of the building, which is located just straight ahead across the lobby.

This old post office is from the town of Naco, Arizona, which is on the southern border of Arizona and Mexico. It was originally ordered as a kit and set up in a building in Naco in the 1890s. All the wood, glass, and metal parts are the original ones! Normally, the Old Naco Post Office is very popular during tours and also with the students in their field trips, but sadly these are suspended because of the pandemic.

We got to see their old hand cancelling machines, self-serve stamp dispensers and even an old letter sorting box (the wooden structure that looks like a grid) from the town of Casa Grande. Above in the mail sorting box are some scales for weighing mail. Below you can see a collection of hand stamps from around the state, such as “Special Delivery” or “Return to Sender.”

After looking at all of the cool machines in the Old Naco Post Office we decided to go to the current USPS contract station, which is in a little room off of the lobby. When going into the post office, we walked past more post office boxes from Naco that were preserved for viewing in the lobby. Here, you’ll also find a vintage pedestal USPS postal box — we put a donation in there to help with the kids educational program. We delivered our mail and looked at all the current US stamps for sale. The colorful stamps at our feet are the new Lunar New Year stamps. Did you know that 2021 is the year of the ox?

The kids program at the PHF is called Stamp Discovery. Every year it supports over 13,000 students and teachers across the United States and other countries with stamps, and lessons using stamps. Of course, this year has been a little different because of the pandemic, but it was still interesting to see the variety of lessons that teachers and parents can order for their students. In the education file room, they are stacked on top of the files, in shelves at the left and the right of us. These boxes contain lessons and stamp packets for students. If a teacher orders a lesson, for example, “Three Branches of US Government”, the teacher receives a worksheet that they can copy for their students, and stamp packets for each student to use with the lesson.

Above you can see the filing cabinets that line the room and continue into another room. They contain US stamps filed by Scott number and also foreign stamps sorted by topics. If a child wants “dogs” to add to their stamp collection, they can write a letter or fill out the order form online, and the people who work and/or volunteer here will send her/him some dogs on stamps. The volunteers who work here are super heroes — they are what enables the education program to function and support so many children and teachers! During a normal year, students would visit the museum for field trips and the director of Stamp Discovery would visit classrooms in the city and suburbs of Tucson. Several of the libraries in Tucson have stamp treasure chests, which inspire kids that visit the library to learn about stamps and the topics on them by checking out books connected with stamp topics.

We walked into the big room off of the lobby and saw all the desks where the sorting and processing of donations happen. The PHF receives philatelic donations almost daily in the mail or by people who drop them off. Volunteers sort through and distribute stamps to the education department for the kids and some of the higher value stamps are put in the sales department for collectors to buy.

Proceeds from the sale of stamps in our philatelic sales department are used to pay for the running of the facility and the education program. Stamps, postcards, and collectible covers are sold there. People donate to PHF because it is a non-profit that inspires kids to learn with stamps and start a collection, thus growing the hobby of stamp collecting, called philately.

Also, we were allowed to go into a display case and visit Owney the famous Mail Dog in US history. There are special pictures, statues, and covers about Owney in the case. It is near the Old Naco Post office so that when the kids tour the old post office they can say hello to Owney, the stuffed dog, and learn about his history from the 1890s. Many books have been written about Owney and the education program has lessons about him. His books are also in the library, which is our next stop!

After talking to volunteers and looking at the processing room, we went out the side door to the patio. The PHF also includes a second building which is the Slusser Memorial Library. This is a modern building dedicated to Peggy Slusser, a lady who lived and worked in Tucson. This building contains a basement full of archives, a reading room, and the stacks of books. Behind the doors to the right are over 30,000 books and journals about philatelic history and the US Civil War. This library is used by researchers, collectors, authors, and of course, school children during field trips. On the walls of the library are paintings commissioned for the library about western adventures in postal history and an exhibit case. You can learn more about the library exhibits and paintings on the museum section of their website.

Well, our visit has come to an end. We were amazed at all of the stamps, donations, and the children’s program. The Old Naco PO is a little unique gem of postal history and the library is first class. Exploring around the world is fun, and if you can’t physically travel, you can explore the world through stamp collecting. We’re glad the Postal History Foundation is around to help children everywhere do just that!

Our huge thank you to Lisa Dembowski, PHF’s Director of Education who graciously took the time to show the Little Mail Carriers around. That was a really cool trip, and we can’t wait to see where they’ll go next!

Annie (aka freezeframe03) is back with another great DIY tutorial, this time featuring paper postcards! She’s made dozens of beautiful papercrafted postcards over the years, and is here to guide you on how to make the postcard below. Enjoy!

The most important thing in making a papercrafted postcard is to make sure it is sturdy and nothing added to it will come loose in the mail.

I began with a 4”×6” (10×15cm) piece of 70lb (114 g/m²) sketch/drawing papers. I sprayed them with Distress Oxide Spray then sprayed one of them again through a stencil. I chose the one on the right to work with this time.

Next, I’ve rubber stamped the words with a waterproof archival ink, and toned down the brightness of the background paint by rubbing the ink over it lightly and darkened the edges.

I’ve used cutting dies to cut flowers and leaves from the same 70lb sketch/drawing paper. You can also cut these by hand, if you’d like, using your drawings or a template you’ve downloaded.

I’ve painted them with watercolors. (Sometimes you just have to hope your mail won’t get rained on.)

Before gluing the flowers to the postcard, I splattered thinned black acrylic paint to the background. I use a spray glue to adhere the flowers and leaves to the background. I then press them down firmly with a brayer. When dry, if there are any loose edges, I use a fine tip glue to get underneath the loose area and glue it down firmly.

When my postcard front is finished, I glue it to a heavier paper (this Canson XL paper is 98lb, or 160 g/m²). I glue it to a piece larger than my postcard then trim around the postcard. Set the postcard under a flat weight so that it dries flat. Check the edges to make sure they are one. Any loose edges can be glued with a fine tip glue. If you don’t have a fine tip for your glue, put some on a toothpick to smear where needed.

It is now a sturdy piece of art that will travel through the mail easily and not get caught in any of the postal machines.

Art can sometimes leave the finished piece warped and even messy on the back. Working on one paper to create your art then adhering it to a clean paper will help to flatten the piece and you don’t have to worry about a messy backside.

The back can be decorated also, just like any other postcard.

Within the United States, a papercrafted postcard can be mailed at the regular postcard rate (unless you’ve added something that will make in non-machinable — in that case, extra postage is needed.

There are so many different ways to make a papercraft art postcard. But as I mentioned previously, make sure it is glued and put together well and that it is sturdy enough to withstand the traveling it will do. Most of my handmade postcards arrive at their destinations as if they were hand delivered.

If you have any questions at all or need some further detailed info, I am more than happy to help out with both.

Thank you Annie, that was brilliant! Check out Annie’s blog for inspiration in all kinds of crafts and art projects, and also this great topic on the forum where postcrossers post their creations.

Good news, everyone! We have an official postcard for the World Postcard Day 2021, and it’s beautiful! 😍

We received 173 submissions in the contest in the past couple of months, and so it was a really difficult task to pick just three winners among all the designs. Together with Finepaper and Curator Georgina Tomlinson from London’s Postal Museum, we’ve ooh’d and aah’d at all the little details, the colors and different ways that our artists (some of them quite young!) chose to interpret this year’s theme “Across the world on a postcard”. Magic carpet postcard rides, postcards as tickets for a worldwide trip, parents showing children the world through postcards, cute animals writing their cards… there was a bit of everything!

In the end, the juries were enthralled by this design from Taiwanese postcrosser and artist Shao-hua Wu (aka shao_huaaa):

She did a brilliant job of illustrating this year’s theme, and we’ll be delighted to see this gorgeous design making its way to many mailboxes on October 1st! Congratulations Shao-hua! About the design, she wrote:

“Postcard with the exotic scenery delivered to every postcrosser.
Made our mind travel to different places on postcards.
Bring the local daily and special memory to people’s normal day.”

Isn’t that sweet? Our minds do travel to different places when we send or receive postcards, as they are indeed little pieces of special memories brought into our days. 😊 You can see many more of Shao-hua’s illustrations on her Instagram page, and we invite you to also come check out the 2nd and 3rd place winners on the contest page.

If you’d like to print this postcard on your local printing shop or through an online service (like Vistaprint), the files are available for download on the World Postcard Day page. If you use it or receive it, we encourage you to share it online with the hashtag #WorldPostcardDay! We’d love to see how far and wide this postcard travels, and especially look forward to seeing pictures of it next to different mailboxes!

And with just a month and a half to go, it’s time to get our ducks in a row and start preparing for the World Postcard Day in earnest! A few events are already on the calendar, but we look forward to many more popping up in the next few weeks.

Not sure how you can celebrate the day? Check out this page for some tips – for instance, you can bring postcards to a classroom to help little ones learn from them and send some, or help your local library or museum do something special to mark the day. Share your plans with us in the comments below, or on this forum topic, so we can spread the word and cheer you on!

And naturally, the World Postcard Day badge will be awarded once more to those who send at least one postcard in Postcrossing on October 1st (during UTC time). Make sure to save some slots until then, so you can request a few postcards on the day!

PS: Hi everyone! I’m adding a little postscript to this post to make a few things clear.

As Paulo mentioned somewhere in the comments below, the World Postcard Day postcard was chosen by a multi-disciplinary jury based on the artistic interpretation of this year’s theme. We think it’s a lovely postcard which perfectly embodies the spirit of “Across the world on a postcard”.

Design competitions are based on artistic merit of the submitted work — not on the artist’s personal life or their views. Postcrossing and the World Postcard Day do not endorse anyone’s political views with this design, and we do not award or disqualify designs based on them.

We have listened to all arguments presented and understand that this is an important topic to some of our members, but we do not see a valid reason to disqualify this postcard. In the end, the World Postcard Day is a celebration of postcards and the joy that they bring — whether one prints the official postcard or chooses to commemorate with any other postcard, it’s all good!

Postcrossing aims to be a respectful and friendly community, and many of the comments in this blog post were not in that spirit. Because this discussion no longer feels productive, I’m afraid we are closing the comments here. As always, the team can be reached directly via the Contact Form.

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 comes from candyflosscurls on the forum! Many countries have their own wise sayings and proverbs, and sometimes they’re a fascinating reflection of the culture or of stories that other countries don’t share. So this month, we’re suggesting you share those!

I must admit that I had to turn to Google for this. I don’t actually speak Welsh, and didn’t grow up in Wales… and it’s hard to know what English proverbs might be unusual or interesting for other people, knowing how widespread proficiency in English can be! So it was from Wales Online that I found this one: “Bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn”. It literally means (according to my very basic Welsh and Google Translate) “casting old wives and sticks”, but Wales Online translated it as “it’s raining old wives and walking sticks”. I guess that’s a variation on “it’s raining cats and dogs”, but it sounds a bit more cantankerous. Mind you, the Welsh certainly know rain! There’s a joke I’ve told about both Wales and where I live now in Yorkshire: there are three states of weather here: it’s either raining, it’s just rained, or it’s about to rain.

I can think of some lovely words of Welsh I actually know, if that might count! “Hiraeth” is the word for an intense homesickness or longing, specifically for one’s home in Wales. Obviously that’s a word that served my family well, living up in Yorkshire! But my favourite is the word “cwtch”, which I use fairly often. It means a hug or cuddle, but “cwtch” also means cupboard, a safe place to put things… so when you offer someone a cwtch, you’re offering them both a hug and a safe place. It’s such a warm word!

So that’s my contribution! What about you? Can you think of any proverbs or sayings from your country that might be interesting to share? If so, we’d love to hear about them in the comments, but you can also use that as a prompt if you’re not sure what to write on your postcards!