What do you do with all your postcards?
 

I've been collecting them over the years, and they are just in a pile in a drawer. What can I do with them?? I need ideas.

:)

Hi amelie,

So are mine. If you keep them for a hundred years or so, they become collectibles.

My sister makes collages and frames them.

Do you have your photos in albums?
I make my travel photo albums 'multi-media' and include some pages with postcards (and other things like restaurant receipts, menus, napkins, etc)

Or take a few great ones, and put them in frames, you can have them mounted several to one frame.

yeah all my photos are in albums, I'm anal about that. I have a seperate scrapbook too.

Framing them is a good idea, something I never got around to....

Throw them out! ((#))

Cheers,
Jan

Scan them into the computer and then pass them off as your photos!

Okay, seriously, ira and elaine have given good ideas.

I hang them up on my cubicle walls at work. That way I can daydream about exotic locales when I don't feel like working!

I use them as recipe cards and keep them in the kitchen, where I think that I will create the fabulous dishes written on the back...and then never do.

Before I leave on a trip to a country, I mail a set of postcards to friends from that country from my US departure airport. It's cheap to mail them that way.

My friends get a postcard long before one would come back from oversees. Lately it's the only postcard they'll get due to the euro.

If it's a new country for me then I'll send them a postcard from anywhere. I've confused a few people that way. :-)

Mail them to your out of town friends and let them know how you are and that you are thinking of them. Is there a better use?

I have lots of postcards and photos stuck on the inside of closet and cabinet doors. Then every time I need a glass, toothpaste, or towel, I can revisit favorite places and people.

I collect old postcards, so I sewed carefully-spaced buttons on a linen curtain. The buttons are just the right distance apart to work as "photo corners" for the postcards. I have 75 postcards of Italy, circa 1910-1920 displayed on the curtain--all places I have visited that still look much the same.

I've decided to make a table by getting an old, single paned window and place postcards on the glass then "sandwich" them with another piece of glass. Then fix legs from an old TV tray to the bottom. I saw this done on TV and it looked easy and pretty cool.

Sandi, what a great idea! I have tens upon tens of postcards AND an engineer husband! Much better than recipe cards.

<i>Scan them into the computer and then pass them off as your photos!</i>

Good one, degas! :)


If you don't need to hold on to them, amelie, bardo's suggestion is a great one.

<i>&quot;Before I leave on a trip to a country, I mail a set of postcards to friends from that country from my US departure airport. It's cheap to mail them that way.&quot;</i>

No offense, but what is the point of that? Isn't the whole reason for sending postcards to let those at home know you're having a great time wherever you are?

I gave up sending postcards long ago. No one at home really cares that much that I'm traveling again. :) I only buy postcards now for my scrapbook - if photograpghy isn't permitted at sites.

I mix the postcards in with my photos in a small album; sometimes the postcards are just better pictures that I can get. I also use the extra postcards during the year as birthday cards, thank you cards, etc. I have tons of them and it's fun going through them to find the right one to send someone for a special occasion.

We packbacked Europe some years ago and my in-laws saved all the postcards we sent to them and gave them to us on our return. I put them in our Europe photo album. It is very interesting now to read the backs about where we've been.It was a nice idea.

i use them as bookmarks, leave them in the book after i've finished reading it, place the book back in the bookcase .... years later i've gone back to a book and had the pleasure of finding a little memory hidden inside. i do this with all sorts of stuff .... concert tickets, boarding passes, bus/train/tram/boat tickets from holidays.

I've framed a few favorites-beautiful Florentine paper designs of the Duomo, Ponte Vecchia et. Also, I've hijacked my husbands cigar boxes &quot;decoupaged&quot; them to the tops and use them as jewelry boxes.

- Do you have your photos in albums?
I make my travel photo albums 'multi-media' and include some pages with postcards (and other things like restaurant receipts, menus, napkins, etc) -

That's exactly what I do. When I come home, I put together massive scrapbooks of my trips - in it are postcards side by side of my own amatuerish photos of the same thing - receipts, metro tickets, tour propaganda, fliers and cards. I've turned into a real pack rat during the trip - grabbing and saving anything about what we've seen and done during the trip.

I've found that it really livens up my scrapbook and also helps bring back more memories than just looking at photos and nothing else.

Throw them away.

I hang them up at work, and my frig at home. I need a constant remainder of my passion for travel :)

These are all awesome ideas.

indytravel - sending them before you leave cracks me up for some reason.

I hardly send post cards anymore, most people don't care anymore either.

And those of you that said &quot;throw them away&quot;, noooooooooo!!! I usually throw everything away (and I mean everything, I'm obsessed with those clean house, clean sweep, organizing type shows).... but you can't throw away post cards.

I have a rather large book whose purpose it is to store postcards. I've had it so long I can't remember where it came from. On the front it says &quot;cartes postales&quot; and the pages have slits in them, perfect for positioning the postcards.

Wonder where I got that thing? Soon I will need another one!

Mine are in the various little plastic and paper bags in which all the little bits I save on holiday end up - tickets, leaflets, postcards etc.

And those are in turn strewn around the house, in drawers, boxes, on the floor.

Our house is NOT exactly a Domestic Godess domicile.

I buy big poster frames and fill them with photos, postcards, receipts, hotel business cards, metro passes, museum passes, train tickets, etc. If I don't fill up all the space, I go to the scrapbooking store and get stickers that are travel related to fill the extra space. I currently have two posters hanging on my dining room wall (one from trip to Italy, France and Greece; and the other from second trip to Italy). I'll soon add one from trip to Paris this past spring. I have a Cinque Terre calendar on my wall at work, which sends me daydreaming almost daily!

I teach 9th grade World History. Recently, I laminated all my postcards and hung them on the walls around my classroom. Kids love to look at them and I can enjoy them too!

offwego- I need a book like that! Where oh where did you get it.

tammylouky- I used to do that in college, I made a big boarder of them. That is a good idea too though, for when I get my own classroom someday (stuck being a sub for another year).

Tammylouky, that's exactly what I was thinking. If you don't find a way to use them yourself, before throwing them away, offer them to a school in your area. In my school, all the fifth graders participate in the Geography Bee and postcards are a great way to get them interested in geography, culture and people all over the world. One year I asked all the families in the school to send postcards of their summer travels to the fifth grade class. Many postcards came in and in September, the cards started us on a great learning experience. So, don't throw the cards away, please, but think of other ways to make use of them.

Indy, I don't understand how do you get the cards from another country BEFORE you leave your own country?

I usually bring the cards and mail them from home when I return. So far haven't been caught :)

When I read the title of this thread, I took it to mean postcards that have been received. It made me think of my husband's lovely grandmother. When she died a few years ago, we ended up with many of her cookbooks. She had used cards and postcards received from friends as bookmarks for her favorite recipes. I have left them, and think of her and her friends as I thumb through the books.

I try to limit 2 - 3 per city I visit. I then purchase wood and decoupage them on. I have made 2 end tables and a set of dinner trays this way. Also add in a few coasters of places I have been.

Clea

<i>I usually bring the cards and mail them from home when I return. So far haven't been caught.</i>

Doesn't the US postmark give it away. :)

Kavey, OK, you can come to my house. You'd recognize the style. I suffer from CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome). And when you come, you can help me find that plastic bag with all my stuff from Rome last winter. Still trying to locate it so I can finish my scrapbook.

Pottery Barn has this big framed glass shadowboxes that you can put lots of postcards in and hang on the wall. I don't know if I like this or not....


http://ww2.potterybarn.com/cat/pip.c...amp;gids=p4425