A couple of years ago, I saw a post from someone who taped a disposable camera to a piece of cardboard and mailed it across the United States with instructions printed on it asking every postal worker who touched it to please take a picture so that the mail’s journey cross country could be documented.  It sounded like such an awesome idea and I knew I had to try it.  It took me a couple of years but we finally tried it out.  Yay!

Here is the camera set up we mailed out.  We mailed it from California to Virginia and then back home again.

Fourteen pictures were taken on the trip cross country but, sadly, only six of them turned out.  The ones that didn’t turn out were taken inside the various post offices and were too dark to print.  I can make out those florescent office lights in the negatives but nothing else in the rest of the pictures.  The six that did turn out were all taken outdoors and that’s why they worked.  The camera had a flash but it had to be manually turned on and I forgot to mention that part in my plea to the postal workers.  I’ll definitely have to put that message on the next one I send out.

Here are the pictures that turned out.  This is a picture I took with it at the post office in CA where the journey began.

Then there were a lot of extremely dark pictures that were too dark to print out.  Here is a picture from it when it arrived in Virginia.

This is a picture with it of the destination house in Virginia.

Then there were more “too dark pictures” and then came along this picture taken by a mailman who found it here in CA.  He took a picture of the post office where he picked it up.

Then he took a picture of his mail truck and even added a note to his truck.  It says, “Jennifer, they brought me in this truck.  I got to sit in the front.”  How cool is that?!!

Then he took another picture with the camera at my mailbox with two notes.  They say, “Jennifer, He’s going to put me in there and it is hot.”  “Please come and pick me up soon.  I arrived here 4/27/11.”  Apparently, we have an awesome mailman who enjoyed playing along with us.  I sure wish the other eight pictures would have turned out because those may have been just as awesome, but we’ll never know. :(

This is how the camera mail looked upon its return....a little beat up but it made it intact both ways.  Yay!!!! 

We left a thank you note for our mailman taped to our mailbox and gave him copies of the pictures he took.  We wanted to let him know how much we appreciated his humor. :)  When I went to check the mail later in the day, the mail had been delivered and he had taken the note and pictures with him.  Hope he is sharing them with his friend and family and that they got a kick out of it.

We are so going to do this again and see what we find next time!

If anyone else wants to do it, here’s how I did it.  First, I measured and then cut out an eyehole square and a slot to wind the camera from the cardboard.  Then I glued the camera to a piece of cardboard and let it dry.  Then I used clear packing tape to doubly secure the camera to the cardboard making sure not to cover important parts of the camera.  Then I added a name tag sticker and added the mailing address and return address. Then I wrote on the cardboard, “Postal Workers: Please take a picture of yourself and/or where you are when you get this.  We are trying to document the travel from CA to VA.  Thanks!”  I also gave my email address and said that they could email me to see the pictures they took.  I wrote this on both the front and the back of the cardboard.  Here is a tips page.

This is what the back of the cardboard looked like (with the eyehole and winding slot cut out).

It cost $2.05 to mail it from CA to VA.

If any of you end up trying it out, I’d love to see pictures or hear how it turned out and I’ll link your pictures here.