People generally feel there’s no need to send a postcard anymore. After all, their snapshots appear on Facebook or Instagram accompanied by brief mentions of what they ate for dinner or how the weather is that day. Still, there’s something about an actual postcard arriving in someone’s mailbox that’s special.
During the summer in New Hampshire pick up a few scenic postcards at local stores, write a little message, and send them to friends. They will be so pleased to personally hear from you and will prop the card on the mantle or on the coffee table where seeing it reminds them of you.
In particular, send some to people who may not be online. How about someone in a nursing home or an older person who never took up computer messaging or Facebook? It will brighten their day to know you thought of them. Send a series of scenes to someone who’s coming to visit you during the summer. It will whet their appetite for what they will see and do on their vacation.
I decided to make my own postcards with photos I’d taken of New Hampshire scenes. Shutterfly had a free 100 photos offer, so I selected 10 of my photos and ordered 10 copies of each. All I had to pay was the postage and soon the 100 prints arrived in my mail.
Next, I took a stack of old Christmas cards (I’m a bit of a hoarder) and cut them down to the size of the photos. I used Staples brand of clear glue which is wrinkle-free to glue my NH photos over the Santas and the seasonal greetings. That makes the prints stiff enough to serve as postcards. The reverse side is plain, so that’s where I’ll put the address, stamp, and my message. Here’s a sample of my newly created postcards.
Postcards created by Virginia Allain with her photos.
Of course, you can create and order postcards from sites like Zazzle using your photos, but that costs more. I’ve even done that in the past. Still, I like creating my own and recycling Christmas cards at the same time.
When I ran out of photos, I cut up last year’s calendar and glued the pictures to old greeting cards to get the right thickness for my homemade postcards. Here are some examples of that.
Old calendar scenes turned into postcards.
What do you think? Are you going to send some postcards to friends and family? How about making your own cards? Let me know what you think.
I'm a retired librarian...photographer, online content creator, genealogist, political activist, and writer. My passion is convincing people to preserve their family history and to write about their childhood memories.
Summer in New Hampshire 
Great ideas! And I love getting these in the mail from you!
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