Swap #2

My second successful swap was also initiated by me, but actually not as a swap ... I just wanted to do something nice for a new Postcrosser. But that made him want to do something nice for me too. :-)

I was just surfing the site when I came across this user's profile. Kjell lives in Trondheim and collects stamps with frogs on them. He asked a rhetorical question in his profile - maybe there are postcards with frogs, too? He had never seen any, but he was open to the idea that there might be. :-) Coincidentally I had such a card in my collection, so I emailed him and told me that if he would send me his address, I would send him a frog card. :-)

He answered me almost immediately and was more than happy to give me his address. He also asked me to send along mine, so he could return the favor. I sent this card on November 9th.

On November 12th I got a letter and some photos in reply. V. cool reptile photos! It turned out that Kjell is a reptile fan like me. He'd taken the photos himself on vacation. I will do something fun with them ... but that'll be a story for another blog post. :-)

And seeing as how turtles are some of his favorite reptiles, I may be sending him another card one of these days too. Watch this space. ;-)

DIY postcards, option #2

So, the first place I tried having postcards made from my own photos didn't really deliver the product I was hoping for. I won't be buying from that company again. So I needed ;-) to find somewhere else to try ... I really love the idea of cards made from my own best shots. As long as they're the quality I want. I decided to take a closer look at the company that had made the card I got from Sonja in Iceland - moo.com.

Moo looked really professional and inviting at first glance. I also really liked the fact that in both of the standard postcard packages they offer - 20 or 60 cards - you can use as many different images as you want. Ie, if you buy 60 cards, you can get 60 different ones, 60 identical ones, or anything in between. I really really like that. :-) I uploaded 12 different images, so that I'd get five cards of each photo.

You can also add a text to your cards - a greeting, an internet address, your snail mail address, whatever you want. This text will be identical on all cards though.

I placed the order on October 10th, and it took about a week and a half to arrive. The price was good ... shipping included I ended up paying between 5 and 6 crowns per card, which compared to store prices here in Norway you cannot complain about. A regular tourist postcard will normally cost 8 or 10 crowns.

But the price is actually less important than the quality. I mean, I'll pay for quality. And if the cards don't look good it doesn't matter if they're cheap. When these cards arrived, however, I was very far from disappointed. I was in fact very impressed. :-) The quality of these cards is really excellent. Wonderfully strong and bright colors, beautiful details, thick cardboard ... really the same quality as actual photos. I couldn't be happier with these cards, and I will definitely be buying from Moo again.

This time I don't have to include the actual photos in the post, because the cards themselves are the same quality. :-)

DIY postcards, option #1

Well, maybe not entirely DIY, but you get my drift. :-)

One of the very first Postcrossing cards I received was one that the sender had had made from one of her own photos. That this was possible hadn't really occurred to me before, but of course, it's a brilliant idea. I have quite a few very good shots that I would love to do something more with than 'just' posting them on my blog. :-) So I started looking around for someplace where I could have some of these made into postcards.

I first thought I should try to find some Norwegian option, and some googling led me to Ifolor.no. I'm not sure that I'd ever heard about this company before. They advertise photo products of the highest quality. Their prices seemed pretty good, so I decided to check them out. They offered a ten-pack of cards from each photo uploaded. I used two different photos, and I ended up paying about 130 crowns (postage included) for 20 cards.

Production and shipping was quite quick, my cards were in my mailbox after one week.

The quality however ... meh. I wasn't entirely happy with the quality. The print is too grainy and the color reproduction isn't as good as I'd hoped. I've been using the cards, of course - they're certainly good enough to send, and I've gotten very positive feedback on them - but I will not be ordering from this company again.

My original photos.

The postcards. They actually look better photographed than they do in real life. :-D