Postcrossing Blog

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.

And now, for something a bit different: Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe are two creative artists with a very special goal – to send a personal handwritten letter to everyone in the world! Impossible? Most likely. Crazy? Perhaps. But it’s surely different, and they are doing their best to do it in a creative and mysterious way – they call it Mysterious Letters.

In April last year, they have sent handwritten letters to all 467 households in the Irish village of Cushendall – not bad for a start. And in November, they wrote 620 letters – all different and personal – to each home in Polish Hill (Pittsburgh, USA). Here’s what BBC had to say about it:

But they are not stopping here. Now they want to go even bigger and write to even more people!

This time, they are allowing anyone to get involved in their enthusiastic plan – they have setup their project at kickstarter.com so that people can donate towards it (if there aren’t enough supporters, the donation is returned).

In exchange for the donations, they are offering peculiar things – from allowing the supporters to choose a theme for the letters they will send, to actually receive handwritten letters from Michael and Lenka themselves. For the largest supporter level, they are even offering to hand deliver a letter to the supporter in person!

Even though it sounds a bit crazy, we love the creative way they are doing it all. You can find more information about the project at their Mysterious Letters blog and for details of how help them, check here.

A small town in Oregon (U.S.A.) is asking for postcards from all over the world. In return, they will send back their recently created postcards about their town. What else could we ask?

Here are the details:

I just wanted to invite all Postcrossers to contribute a postcard to an upcoming event:

Celebrating the Art of the Postcard

Help the Cornelius Post Office celebrate the joy of small works of art and personal communication. Cornelius is a small town in Western Oregon, known for hazelnuts, blueberries and vineyards. Here at the local post office we noticed that for visitors there was no way of sending a local postcard to share the cool things about this unique little town. We’re working on that! Share your postcard with us and get one of the ones we are producing!

Exhibition: Begins January 11, 2010 in the lobby of the Cornelius, OR Post Office.

Make sure to include your return address to receive one of our postcards in return and to be included in the list of participants.

Send your postcards to:

Postmaster
1639 Baseline Street
Cornelius, OR 97113
USA

Follow us at: http://postcardmailart.blogspot.com/

Have you sent yours?

Postcards tell us stories. About their journey, their sender, their origin. Their photo can tell a lot about the place where they came from and the stamps can share some history about the country too. But they still hold potential to tell much more. Thinking of this, Anna and Tess Knoebel have started Abe’s Penny – a micro-magazine in postcard format.

Each monthly issue of Abe’s Penny has 4 postcards that together form an artistic narrative prepared by a photographer and writer. The themes are random and unexpected and each issue has new artists that prepare the photo for the postcard and the accompanying text.

All postcards are mailed to its subscribers at the rate of one per week and they accept subscribers from anywhere in the world.

If you would like to subscribe to Abe’s Penny micro-magazine or if you are just curious about it, be sure to check their website and their archive for the previous issues. Let us know what you think!