Transparent Postcards

I love making postcards to send to my friends and family.  Home-made postcards are great because they combine artistic self-expression with meaningful functionality.  They are meant to be looked at and admired, but only after successfully relaying a personal message from one person to another.

The idea for a transparent postcard first came to me when I accidentally wrote to a friend of mine using the wrong card.  I mistakenly used a postcard that I had purchased in her hometown, so rather than depicting an image from a far off land as I had intended, the landscape on the front was one with which she was already intimately familiar.  'What a wasted opportunity' I thought.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we are often less familiar with our own surroundings than we'd like to think.  I tested my theory by looking, really looking, at a postcard from my hometown.  I was shocked by all the details I had never noticed, or noticed once and then taken for granted.  'Wouldn't it be nice,' I thought, 'if I could send people postcards that emphasized the beauty of their own surroundings, rather than some place they've never been?'  From there, it was a short jump to the idea of a window, and finally to a transparent postcard.

This is a picture instructable showing some of the transparent or 'window' postcards I have made in recent weeks.  I chose not to make step-by-step instructions because the basic premise of postcard creation from scratch is outlined here, in my other 'ible.  The idea is the same for these transparent postcards, with only a few simple extra steps which I will detail in the last seven photos.  I hope these photos inspire you to make a few cards of your own, and take a closer look at where you live.  And I'd love to see photos of the results, if you do.

Happy Mailing.

P.S.  _{I have successfully mailed 4 or 5 of these transparent postcards, even internationally, with no problems.  I checked the USPS website, and their rules and regulations regarding postcards make no mention of transparency as a problem.  However, I make no claim that every postal carrier will accept these cards, although I would hope that they do.}