Happiness in your non-digital mailbox

After a lovely and exhausting week of exploring Lisbon I am back home. These trips are killing. I need rest. So I bought Flow magazine, made myself a cup of tea and sat down on my couch. Relax mode. Flow wrote an article on postcrossing. I love that. It inspired me to send some cards and write about it here. I started being a postcrosser 1074 days ago, according to my postcrossing profile. I am not sending as many cards as I should and therefore not receiving as many as I want. I am changing that right now.

For those of you who don't know what postcrossing is: it's real simple. The postcrossing website will give you the address of a random postcrosser in the world. You send them a pretty postcard or a letter. Write something on it about yourself or whatever you want. You will get a notification, usually with a thank you email from the recipient, when it has arrived. It also states how many kilometers it has traveled and how many days it took to get there. Once you have sent one card, your address can be given to another postcrosser and you can expect a card in your own mailbox. The more cards you send, the more you will receive.

I have received very different cards from all over the world. Some are gorgeous illustrations, that are still hanging on my wall, others are hideous views of depressing places. But it's always interesting. Someone completely unexpectedly writing you and wishing you a wonderful day just brings a smile to my face. I like the excitement of opening my mailbox and hoping to see something other than blue (tax) envelopes and a flyer from the pizza place around the corner. Once I received the most beautiful package from China. It was a big envelop, covered with all these pretty stamps. And inside the envelope there was a collection of things, lovely things. Pretty paper, Chinese coins, a lollypop, a long handwritten letter, some collectors cards, a button and more. This was postcrossing at its best. It made my heart jump. I used a few of these stamps in my necklaces. The one with the pink love birds is still for sale at Stoffer + Blik.


If you love paper, snail mail, people and foreign places, I think you should give this a try. Besides the cards and the stamps it is completely free. A little happiness on your doormat! Now I am off to write a postcard to Charlotte in Germany.