Posted on 4 Comments

philately will get you nowhere…

Back in May I joined Swapbot I can’t quite remember how I found out about it, but it was probably seeing it used as a hashtag on Instagram on posts by people sharing photos of their handmade postcards. I was attracted by the idea of swapping handmade postcards with people from all over the world, which would give me another excuse to muck about with paper and paint. As a new member I had to complete 5 swaps and be rated postively by the recipients before I could take part in any more swaps. Being a keen bean I achieved this in a couple of weeks and then I was free to join in as many swaps as I wanted. Since then I have made and sent these…

These 2 cards were for the same swap, 2 partners, theme : sender’s choice.

 

theme : senders choice
theme : collaged postcard

theme: make 2 notecards for 2 partners, these went missing in the post to Canada, so I made 2 more and re-sent them. These are the 2 new ones, which happily did arrive..

front and back of handmade notecard
handmade notecard
theme : decorate an envelope
theme: senders choice
theme : collaged face
theme : senders choice
theme : butterflies
theme : butterflies
theme : senders choice
theme : multicoloured card, recipients profile said they liked elephants
theme : senders choice
theme : decorate an envelope
theme : use the inside of security envelopes, like you get from your bank, the small patterns make the contents illegible to prying eyes. I didn’t know this before, did you?
theme : collaged landscape
theme : patterns
theme : butterflies
theme : senders choice

Tell you what, sending all of these cards in the post has given me a newfound appreciation of postage stamps. Little did I know that I would become a stamp collector at the age of 54 ! I’ve been buying “special issue” stamps from the post office as they are released, and I was well chuffed when the post office person gave me a little calendar with the release dates on it. I then discovered that I could buy old, but unused stamps that were still usable for posting. Full blown stamp geekery commenceth!
I am also taking part in another thing called Postcrossing here are some of the stamps I’ve used for it..
Postcrossing mainly calls for shop bought postcards, of which I have admit I have started a collection of. Occasionaly a handmade card is acceptable, and here’s a couple of mine.

Of course, having sent all of these cards I have also been receiving some interesting mail. More of which in a future post.
You can see all of my handmade postcards here

4 thoughts on “philately will get you nowhere…

  1. that looks and sounds magic…great way to either use up scraps or make scraps into other creative collage AND then mail them. I wonder where the missing swaps ended up…

    1. I wonder too, the envelope had a return address on it, so maybe one day it will come back, and it will add a little to the story 🙂

  2. This intriguing “exhibition” of your postcards is an inspiration. Thank you so much. I am not surprised some were “lost”. I would be hard pressed NOT to keep one if I found it.

    1. Thank you, strangely the one that went missing was in a plain envelope, so was hidden from sight! However that means it had a return address on it (unlike the naked postcards) so it might return to base at some point .

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