On my recent trip to Idaho I wanted to send a post­card home to fam­ily. How­ever, I didn’t want to just send a bor­ing paper post­card. I came up with the idea of mail­ing an actual Idaho potato with my mes­sage writ­ten on it. My friends didn’t think the postal ser­vice would mail it, but I didn’t let that stop me. I bought my potato, scrubbed it clean, let it dry, wrote my mes­sage on it with my Sharpee and headed to the post office. To my friends sur­prise, they were will­ing to mail it. There was only one glitch in the whole thing, it weighed more than a pound, so the postal stick­ers that needed to be placed on it were too big for the potato size. I wanted to share my story to ignite cre­ative ideas to mail cards and post­cards to friends and fam­ily when you’re on your next vaca­tion away…

HELPFUL TIPS:

• be sure your object is under one pound
• don’t assume they will or will not mail a cer­tain item, ask
• make sure your sur­faces are cleaned well so postage will stick to surface
• use a Sharpee pen so your message/address doesn’t smear off

IDEAS:

• Mail an object as your post­card that has to do with the area you are vis­it­ing. Think coconuts for Hawaii, apples for New York, pota­toes for Idaho…you get the idea!
• If you’re feel­ing more tech­ni­cally cre­ative, use an app like Cards by Apple, to mail a photo post­card right from your smart phone.