Postcrossing Blog

Today we have another great story of members using Postcrossing in an unusual way – with inspiring results!

The librarians, employees and volunteers of De Bibliotheek Reuver (The Library of Reuver), in the Netherlands, started a Postcrossing-inspired book club! Here’s how it works: they’ve asked every postcrosser that sent them a card to name the title(s) of their favourite book(s). When they receive the card, they search the suggested books and put in a special bookshelf, on top of which the received postcards are also displayed.

They’ve also set up a large map on the wall, where they put a copy of the postcards received, and a small profile of the sender. The postcards are connected to the countries by strings, to help children find out where they are! It looks great!

As visitors of the library walk by, they’re free to choose a book from this shelf and read it, effectively picking up reading tips from all over the world! :)

Ellis (aka TheBusyLibrarian) tells us “Our readers like the book club as it gives them new or at least unexpected titles. They also like the idea that somebody took the time to name their favorite and recommend a really good/interesting book. (..) Old and new titles appear on these favorite lists. Most we have in our collection.”

The Reuver’s Library Postcrossing book club has recently been featured on the De Limburger newspaper – you can read the article (in Dutch) here. They’re also planning to organise a meetup soon, to introduce visitors to Postcrossing, and help them get started. If you’re the area, and would like to help or just get together with other postcrossers, get in touch with TheBusyLibrarian for more details.

Well done Ellis, and everyone at the the Reuver’s Library team! Big thumbs up for this initiative! :)

On September 2011, Mary Robinette Kowal decided it was time for a break. She spent the entire month offline, and asked her friends to communicate with her through letters. The results of this personal challenge were a revelation:

When I write back, I find that I slow down and write differently than I do with an email. Email is all about the now. Letters are different, because whatever I write needs to be something that will be relevant a week later to the person to whom I am writing. In some ways it forces me to think about time more because postal mail is slower. “By the time you get this…” It is relaxing. It is intimate. It is both lasting and ephemeral.

How so? I find that I will often read the letters that I receive twice. Once when I get them and again as I write back. So, that makes it more lasting. It is more ephemeral because I don’t have copies of the letters that I write and I am the only one who has copies of the letters that my correspondents write. So, more ephemeral.

I know a lot of postcrossers share these feelings – this is part of the reason why Postcrossing exists!

Mary’s decided to turn February into a Month of Letters, in which she challenges herself and everyone who decides do join to write and send at least a piece of postal mail every day. Here are the rules:

Mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

We can’t help but feeling postcrossers have their work cut out for them in this challenge… :) Nevertheless, we wanted to dare you all to do it! Write postcards, letters or aerogrammes or surprise a friend with an unexpected package. Maybe even pick a Facebook/Twitter friend and send them with an offline “hello!”.

Are you up to Mary’s challenge? Grab your stationery and stamps and start writing! :)

PS – Scrutiny set up a forum post for members who are doing this challenge to keep track of their progress!

Remember the World’s smallest postal service we wrote about two years ago? They make tiny customisable letters that you can send to your loved ones, and which look like this:

Cute, right? It’s impossible not to smile when you get one of these in the mail! :)

Lea Redmond, the Postmistress of the Word’s Smallest Post Service, has recently teamed up with Chronicle Books to make a do-it-yourself kit that allows anyone to do those amazing tiny letters and packages at home!

The World’s Smallest Post Service kit comes with paper, pen, minuscule stamps, stickers, packing material and even a little magnifying glass, so that you can write and send your own tiny letters and parcels.

The kit is available at Amazon.com.

Send one postcard every day for a year. Sounds like fun? A group of Postcrossing fans decided to do just this, but to make it a little more interesting they will make a piece of art every day to send through the post over the course of the year!

The project is called Mailart 365 and was started by Andytgeezer from the UK. Andy is into all things mail and was already featured on this blog for his other project, My REAL wall.

But who better to tell you about Mailart 365 than Andy himself? Here’s what he has to share with you about his new project:

"Since taking up Postcrossing 2 years ago, I found that occasionally, I would get some awesome handmade artworks from other members. This sparked my interest in the mailart movement and I’ve since become heavily involved in the global mailart movement, sending and receiving postcard sized artworks.

I realised recently that I send so much of it and get so much fun out of making mailart, that I wanted to challenge myself to a year of mailart, and Mailart365 was born.

I’ve seen many people take on 365 challenges on the internet. The idea of a 365 is that you make something every day for a year and this is often so big a challenge that many people give up. I decided that the best way to keep myself motivated was to invite a few more mailartists to join me, so I blogged about it, not expecting anybody to join in. Today, only 2 months in (we started on December 1st, 2010 so that it wouldn’t be a new years resolution) Mailart365 has 50 members actively posting to the blog at www.mailart365.com.

The blog has room for 100 members in total, and if any postcrossing member wanted to join they’d be more than welcome to start any time, as long as they are committed to producing, on average, 1 piece of mailart a day for a year. It’s easy to apply to join us, just drop into the website at www.mailart365.com and go to the “Get involved” link at the top of the page.

I personally read every application and will email participants with instructions on how to get started and how to post to the blog. Everyone is in charge of posting their own cards onto the site and I’ll email full instructions on signing up.

We’ve formed a lovely vibrant and supportive community of mailartists, sending to each other and outside of the group too. It’s been a really wonderful experience. Many of us are Postcrossing users too, and are overjoyed when we see people that are willing to receive mailart and handmade cards and will usually make postcards that completely fit the profile.

Since discovering mailart, I’ve discovered artistic skills I never thought I had. I work as a science teacher and was always rubbish at art as a school so grew up thinking that was it, I’m a scientist and nothing more. The beauty of mailart though is that nobody judges your artwork against set rules to give you a grade. You are totally free to express yourself, and when it’s sent the person receiving it will appreciate your art. It beats getting a bill in the post any day!

In addition, criticism is very rare in mailart. As a way to learn and build your confidence as an artist it’s perfect!

However, before anyone decides to embark on Mailart365, I have to warn you – It is a tough challenge, I’m already seeing that I have had to sacrifice some other things to make sure I get my daily artwork done, and often find myself up late at night to complete the artwork for the day, but it’s always worth it!"

If you really love mailart, this is your perfect challenge! And even if you don’t plan to participate, don’t forget to check out their website for their work.

Some years ago, I stumbled on an interesting project by Craig Giffen called The Human Clock, which is a clock that shows the time with pictures submitted by people. The way it works is, for every minute in a day the clock shows a photo that has been submitted by a random contributor, in a random place, using a number of different ways to show the time. For example:

The same developer also brought us a widget, The Human Calendar that maybe you’ve seen before on a blog or website. It’s shows the current date with people:

These days, Craig is working on a new project, The Mail Clock! It is basically the same idea of the Human Clock (a site that shows the time) but this time using mail items that he receives. Like this:

He’s looking for help to complete this new project, so if you have an extra postcard, head over to the project’s site for details on how to help. Remember to be creative!

We can’t wait to see the final result! :)