My Postcrossing Anniversary

Today I realized that I've been a member of Postcrossing just over one year! Hooray!


I can hardly believe it's been that long. So far I've collected 50 postcards!  The two that have traveled the farthest are from Indonesia and Russia. (It's hard to figure out exactly how far they've come. I'm not sure if Postcrossing calculates it by heading east or west.)

The lines on this map make me think of missiles more than postcards. Maybe if everyone did a little Postcrossing we could get by with fewer missiles. Or so I'll keep dreaming.

 The postcards kind of come in waves of two or three on the same day rather than a nice even one per week, but that really doesn't bother me. I've really enjoyed finding all these surprises and seeing more of the world this way. 9/10, highly recommend, would do again. ;)
I just can't believe snail mail has gone out of style. It's different than just online friends! Online I usually immediately block strangers who try to contact me. I don't like people snooping around in what feels like my private (albeit virtual) space. With snail mail the world is both bigger and smaller. The distance is more apparent when you consider how many days you check your box waiting for something before it finally arrives. Thinking about how many hands, trucks, planes etc a postcard comes into contact with on it's way to you makes the world feel very expansive. However, reading whatever little snippet of life people choose to share makes the world feel so small. We're all just people here, and we do a lot of the same things and have a lot of the same problems. I am so glad I've gotten to connect with so many people this way.  

More Love Letters

I recently heard about this organization called More Love Letters, and wanted to pass it along to you letter-writing enthusiasts!

The main goal of More Love Letters is to spread love throughout the world via letters of encouragement and support. One way this is accomplished is by people like us leaving friendly notes of love anywhere around town for strangers to find as a random act of kindness. However, they also have a very targeted approach to making the world a better place. People can nominate friends and loved ones who are going through a hard time and if selected, MLL will post their story, collect letters until a deadline, and send a "bundle" of love/encouragement/support letters written by participants to the nominee in one big fat stack of happy.
I believe they do this on a rotating basis every few weeks or month, and they have recently posted a new list of nominees for requested letters.

Over the holiday weekend I had the pleasure of visiting my BFF, Sara in Indiana. While we were together, we rounded up some supplies, found a comfy (and super awesome, if I may say) place to work, and wrote letters to the current list of bundle recipients.

Comforting words come much more easily to Sara than they do to me, so at first I was a little intimidated that I wouldn't know what to say. Though Sara and I may not have any experience with postpartum depression, anorexia, or whatever their exact situations were; we did discover that we had more in common with the recipients than I originally thought.  It was refreshing to look back at times in my life when I didn't know if things would ever get better and see that somehow they had. Somehow between then and now things changed and improved and so did I. Even without sharing identical experiences I felt like I could connect to each person and (hopefully!) offer something they will find encouraging.

We all know what it's like to have a smile on our faces because we've gotten a surprise letter from a friend. Through this organization you can share that feeling with someone else who is in dire need of a smile. If you can find the time to write even just a little note, you can really make a difference in someone's life, and even the world. Even if you're too busy this month, consider passing this post along to your other pen pal groups or Facebook friends! It will mean so much to someone. Thanks in advance!

 

The Many Wonders of Washi Tape

/drool

I recently had the chance to experiment with washi tape for the first time (largely thanks to an awesome sale at Joann's which made them just a buck per roll instead of $3.00). 

If you don't already know, washi tape is the semi-opaque, brightly colored, wildly patterned Japanese tape that behaves like a cross between Scotch tape and masking tape. Considering it's self adhesive and comes in a million colors and patterns, there is an infinite amount of possibilities!

As you can see, my first experiment was to just make a simple, bright border on some envelopes for my happy mail. I particularly enjoyed the striped outline as it reminded me of old timey air mail envelopes. (I wonder why we don't have to use them today. Anyone know why that is the case?)

My second washi tape experiment involved these adorable birthday cards! The washi tape part itself was a snap, but embossing the background was pretty time/energy consuming. I'm quite happy with the results though! Everyone needs some special happy mail on his or her birthday.

Click here for some sweet project ideas from Tinker With This

Since washi tape is so versatile, there is a plethora of creative project inspiration floating around the internet. I think my next experiment will be to decorate our light switch covers with washi tape. I like that it will be easy to remove if we move since we're apartment renters, and  it will definitely give our place some much needed zest since I'm too lazy to paint. (Mostly every time I think about it, I can just imagine getting a giant rent hike and having to undo all the work when we move out.)

If you haven't yet given washi tape a shot, I highly encourage you to try it! If you have, or have any other awesome project ideas, tell me about it!

Site Review: Postcrossing

A couple weeks ago I mentioned I was going to try playing around with postcrossing.com. Postcrossing is unique because it provides a way for users around the world to exchange postcards. However, there are some strings attached before your mailbox can pile up with exotic foreign mail!

One of the things I liked is that you must send before you can receive.  Every postcard has a unique code that needs to be written somewhere on the card.Your address will not be given to a sender until someone records that they have received a postcard from you. Even then, you don't have an instant postcard collection. Your address will be distributed to one person per card you send.

Postcrossing also has a limit in place so you don't get too far ahead of every one else.When you first start, you can send up to five postcards at once. These are referred to as "traveling" postcards until the recipient enters the code onto the website. Only after the postcard's code is recorded does it count as a "sent" postcard. This limit does seem to be a little flexible though: after your first five cards have been received your traveling postcard limit will increase to six. (I'm not sure if this continues escalating like some kind of leveling system or not, but the gamer in me is eager to find out!)

A visual of my Postcrossing escapades. Blue lines are postcards I have sent, the red line is the one have received so far.

I'm hurrying!

As you can see, I've sent a lot more postcards than I have received so far, but let's not forget this is snail mail! I mean look at this map! Germany, Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, and Malta are all pretty distant destinations. (I also have sent one to New York, but as I have never been, it's still a little glamorous in my mind.) Factoring in the distance and especially business days vs weekends etc, 18 days of travel time so far really isn't all that much for most of my initial cards.

In theory if enough time passes (and those assigned my address aren't forgetful!) it will all even out 1:1. The turn around time from when my first card was received and when I got one in my mailbox was much shorter than I expected; however, it was being sent from within my own country. (By the way, Postcrossing does give you the option to choose if you want to get postcards from your own country or not.)

Another nice little tidbit I enjoy about Postcrossing is that it tracks your total mileage! I was pretty impressed by these stats, and so far there are only 8 total cards involved! I honestly can't imagine what these numbers will look like in a year's time.

All in all, it's a pretty cool site! I'd really reccommend it. And for the record, they aren't paying me to say any of this or anything. (Come on, you really think I'm that cool?) There's only one thing I would change about Postcrossing: I'd really love it if they put in some kind of a comprehensive map like the one I made above, but for now you can only view maps for the journey of individual cards.