Postcrossing Blog

Inge Löök is a Finnish illustrator and gardener who is perhaps best known for her “merry aunties” character postcards – an enduring favorite of postcrossers. She was previously featured on the blog over 10 years ago, and was kind enough to make time for an email interview with Clarisse (aka CStar9), for her series of conversations with illustrators and postcard makers. Enjoy!

Please tell us about your studio.

The place where I do my drawings is not very large; a table, a chair and the rest does not require much space. I prefer an enclosed small space where my thoughts stay together and do not wander away into other spaces. The house where I live is also small and the purpose of the house is solely to live in it. The nature outside is eternal and if I start to feel cramped I only need to open the door.

You take special care to create postcard sets of your art. Why postcards?

The old-fashioned way of sending letters and postcards is beautiful. You get to hold and touch the same paper the sender has touched. It is a gift and a thoughtfulness that requires planning in a completely different way than electronic messages.

For new ideas, what is the first step to getting an idea from your head to the page?

I do not use sketchbooks but I tend to use the back side of used photocopy sheets. Today I mainly draw postcards and if I get an idea I quickly note it down on any piece of paper with a few lines only so that I later remember how I envisage the theme for a new post card. An idea can emerge at any time, even in the middle of the night, and if so, in the morning I must swiftly note it to not forget it.

Please tell us a bit more about the origins of the Aunties characters in your art.

My closest neighbor lives around 30 meters from me in a house as small as mine. We think along the same lines and are in daily contact. She is actually one of the aunties in my illustrations, and I am the other one. In fact, we’ve played out most of what happens in my illustrations of the aunties. We’ve had wine in a tree, cakes under the table, and what we haven’t done, we wish we could do. This includes sitting high up in a clock tower with dangling legs. We are old now but know exactly how it felt when we were small and searched for messages in bottles.

Nature seems to be almost its own character in your work. We are treated to many detailed scenes that are infused with such attention and care – gardens, forests, fields, barns. How does a sense of place inform your art?

Nature is everything. I’m interested in the little and the small. I often sit with a magnifying glass and study the details of, for instance, flowers or a feather. As I see it, the big and the large then is space which offers fantasy experiences because we are unable to go there. I’ve got equipment for bird watching, and it is not only birds I look at, but the environment as a whole.

What is on the horizon for your art this year?

I’ve always had a hard time planning the future. The future has never really existed, but rather, it has merely appeared, which means that I have then had to face it as it appears.

To learn more Inge Löök and her work, visit her website or check out her Instagram.

If you’ve made it all the way here to the last bit, here’s a little bonus: Clarisse has 4 Inge Löök postcards to send to 4 postcrossers. To participate in this mini-giveaway, leave a comment below and let us know what adventures you imagine yourself on with your best friend, that would be worthy of being featured on a postcard! 😊 Check back this time next week for the winners!

Today is the day the Åland Postcrossing-themed stamp makes its debut! Hurray! 🎉

Lots of postcrossers have made the trip to the archipelago to participate in a large meetup organized by the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association, taking place to celebrate the stamp launch. If you’re curious to check out the event as it happens, there will be a livestream today (June 7th) at around 2pm Helsinki time (UTC+3), on the Association’s Facebook page.

This is the 392nd stamp issued by Åland Post and the first metallic, heart-shaped Postcrossing stamp ever, and we cannot wait to hold it in our hands!

To commemorate this special occasion, Åland Post has kindly offered to give 7 postcrossers one of these fantastic prizes:

• One Postcrossing stamp sheet of 28 stamps.
• Three Postcrossing first day covers.
• Three Postcrossing maximum cards.

Sounds brilliant, right?

For a chance to grab one of them, all you need to do is to discover something new about the Åland Islands, and leave a comment below to share that fact with the rest of the Postcrossing community. Make it a good one — we want the comments to be filled with interesting facts and bits of history about this place that so few people have heard of!

The comments will be open for one week, and around this time next week, Paulo will run a bit of code that will pick 7 random postcrossers to receive their prizes. We’ll announce them here on this blog post.

Good luck, everyone! :) We hope you enjoy learning more about the Åland Islands, and that a postcard with their shiny new Postcrossing-themed stamp will land on your mailbox very soon.

Hej! Hei!

Good news, everyone! We’re happy to announce that the Åland Islands will be launching a Postcrossing-themed stamp next year! I know your eyes are already drifting to the photo below, so go ahead and have a look:

There are so many cool things about this stamp! First of all, images don’t do justice to its shiny metallic surface, whose colors shift from pink to purple. But there’s also the fact that this is a not a normal stamp… it’s heart-shaped! You can carefully detach the inner perforations and transform the stamp into a heart — how cool is that?!

This special stamp was designed by Åland Post’s own Cecilia Mattsson, and will be issued in June 7th, 2019. To celebrate the occasion, the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association is timing their annual trip to Åland to coincide with the stamp launch. Keep an eye on their website for more information soon, but you can already expect many interesting activities as per their usual adventures.

We know it’s still a long time for this stamp to be issued, but we’re super excited about it and looking forward to seeing it on many postcards next year! 💜

Sometimes people ask why don’t we organize meetups in their area, or why don’t we spread the word so that Postcrossing can have more members in country X… and we would really love to coordinate all the things in all the places… but until they invent 100-hour days (or perhaps a way to multiply ourselves!), I’m afraid our tiny team can only do so much. 😅

So we’re always glad when members reach out to ask what can they do to help. Sometimes they do so by becoming Postcrossing supporters, and other times, by doing things for the community in their own towns or countries. The most organized group of members doing this is from Finland 🇫🇮, where they got together to create an association of “Postcrossing friends”.

So what does the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association do? Mainly, they organize big events in Finland that bring the community together, so that everyone can meet to talk, exchange postcards and be friends. For instance, every year, they go to the Åland Islands, where they participate in meetup activities including visiting the local sorting center or meeting well-known illustrators.

As an association, they also participate in other events, like stamp exhibitions or postcard fairs, handing out fliers about Postcrossing to spread the word. Last year, they even had their very own little booth on the Finlandia 2017 exhibition…

… and put together a postcard fair for all postcard lovers to enjoy!

They also talk about all-things postcards and stamps on their website, and sometimes even get articles published in magazines or newspapers that help spread the word about Postcrossing in their country.

All of these activities are brilliant, but we would not be able to put them in place ourselves, as they require a local knowledge of the country’s culture, as well as people on the ground to take care of contacts and logistics, for which the association is a perfect match. Since the early days of their group, they have also been in close contact with the Postcrossing team, keeping us posted on their activities and exchanging ideas and feedback, which has been very helpful.

Check their website for more information about their activities and about the association itself.

PS – Have you done something that has helped Postcrossing grow in your country? If so, share it in the comments, so that you can inspire others into action! 😊

We first saw Kehvola's cards on a pop-up postcard fair organised by the Finnish Postcrossing Friends Association in Tampere, and I confess I was instantly smitten! It’s no secret I have a sweet spot for illustration, but their playful style and daring colour palette was what got me hooked.

At the time, I sent the postcard on the right to a booklover friend, and stocked on others… though I’ve been very reluctant to part with them!

At the time, we talked a bit with the owners, Veera and Timo, who were staffing their booth at the fair, and Timo agreed to answer a few questions for the blog. So ladies and gentlemen, here he is to tell us more about Kehvola!

How did Kehvola get started? Could you tell us a bit of the story behind it?

Veera (my wife) had previously worked as a store manager in the Finnish National Gallery’s museum shops. There she noticed that there are no nice Helsinki cards available. She started the company and asked the nearest and the cheapest illustrator (me!) to draw a set of Helsinki postcards. This was just four years ago.

We’re fascinated by how coherent your collection is — despite being illustrated by different people. How did this group of illustrators get together? And how do you choose the themes for your pieces?

We are illustration fans and we’ve been very lucky with our artists. So far everybody we’ve asked to join us had said yes. I think our illustrators all have something in common yet they all have their own distinct style. Our illustrators have all illustrated children’s books and are capable of creating narrative pictures with strong sense of atmosphere.

Illustrators are free to offer their own ideas but most of them prefer clear orders from us. I myself think what I would like to draw (this could be an old bike or a rubber boot, a big bookshelves, elvis, tiger or an apple pie) and then consider with Veera would somebody be interested in such a card. If we like the idea enough we print it anyway.

If you could define Kehvola’s style in 3 words, what would they be?

Narrative, colorful, warm.

Are you letter or postcard writers too?

Always when travelling. I love bookshops and museum shops and browsing through their postcard selection. Writing a postcards in a cosy pub or cafe after a long day of walking is an essential part of my traveling.

Could you show us your studio, or the place where the magic happens?

Here’s a picture of Kehvola’s "headquarters”, where I also do the drawing:

Thank you Timo, that was lovely! Besides their shop, you can also find Kehvola on their Instagram and Facebook pages.

Oh! And now for the best part: Timo kindly offered a set of postcards to give away to one lucky postcrosser! For a chance to win it, check out Kehvola’s shop, and leave a comment below, telling us which design or designs were your favourites. We’ll randomly pick a winner by this time next week, and announce it on this post. Good luck! :)