Wish you were here!

When was the last time you received a piece of personal mail through the letterbox? Usually the only things I get are birthday cards (once a year, obviously), or a wedding invitation (hardly ever). Aside from these, it’s thank you notes from various nieces and nephews who have been coerced by their mothers into writing to me.

But now I’ve discovered Touchnote, that makes it so easy to send a personalised card, directly from your phone. No more rummaging in the bottom of your drawer for a suitable card. No more hunting down that crinkled stamp stuck down the back of your purse, or trying to find a shop that sells stamps in the depths of Delhi.

Touchnote is a brilliant app that takes your photos and turns them in to a physical postcard, posts it off to your friend anywhere in the world, straight from your phone. And all for around £1.50.

To create a card, first load up your app with some credit – you pay less per card if you buy in bulk. Then open the app on your phone (it’s free for both Android and iPhone users) and touch ‘Start a postcard’.

You’ll have the option to choose a photo from your camera roll or from any other photos you may have stored on your phone. You can change the layout of the card, choose more than one photo and add a caption if you want.

Once you’re happy with this, you can go to the back of the card and write your message and add the address of the recipient. The app stores addresses you have sent cards to previously, so it becomes really easy to send something to your granny each time you go away.

My favourite feature of this is that you can create a personalised stamp for all your cards, or you can change it for each card you send – I chose my dog because I’m slightly obsessed!

I’ve used this app for loads of different occasions – saying thanks to friends, using a photo of our time at their place, or sending a ‘traditional’ postcard to parents from holidays (they never see my Facebook photos so it’s a great way to share images from our trip). But what I like best is it’s so simple to persuade my children to send thank you notes – they don’t need to find a pen, look up from their smartphones, or worse, make that torturous 100 yard walk to the letterbox.

You can also use Touchnote on your computer and here you make greetings cards as well as postcards. Perhaps it’s something to think about for Christmas cards – after all, there’s only 15 weeks to go!