This Malapert Blood

Friday, May 13, 2011

New swap on swap-bot

Julia was right -- it's easy to get addicted to swaps here. But best of all, I get to upload images straight from my bed. This one is "Ephemera + Insect" --
Swap-bot swap: ATC Addicts - Ephemera + Insect ATC
I swap with Swap-bot!

And those (ephemera + insect) aren't the only elements to be placed on the card, either. I'm going broke buying embellishments! I went through my list of swaps and have a LOT coming due in mid-June, so I'm working busily all along so as not to get caught with a deadline I can't meet. I didn't realize that mini-books typically has a participant send an item to EACH other participant, so I have several toilet paper roll pages and postcards to make. Plus, my Marie Antoinette chunky pages can each be the same, but have to go to ten people. Yikes! That's going to challenge my back for sure. But I will have a gorgeous chunky book in the end.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Swap confusion

I was in a maze book swap on the Yahoo mini-books group, and there was a discussion about whether or not to "decorate" it (started by me). The conclusion was that we would let our partners "fill" their books. So I sent mine off bare, just the basic maze book construction but with tags added.

Then yesterday I got the most GORGEOUS book from my partner. It is not just the basic maze book. It is bursting with decorated and distressed tags, journaling spots, and embellishments. Mostly with a theme of butterflies, but also birds, flowers, and dragonflies. I just talked to Andrew for Mother's Day and he's going to send me some photos of Sam for this one. It's just too cute to leave alone, and even though it says "My story" on the front, my story is his story at the moment. Sort of. To a point.

I'm also in a new swap, a "quick turn-around" or QTA ATC addicts' swap. You only have a week between getting your partner and sending the card. That's not SUCH a quick turn-around, but more so than most. Here's the image:

Swap-bot swap: Weekend QTA 13! Sender's Choice ATC
I swap with Swap-bot!

Not particularly relelvant to anything, but there have to be SOME pictures on this blog. That's my next project -- get a camera and re-learn how to upload pictures and get them to this computer, not just the PC. (Blogging would be just too hard on a desktop PC.)

Oh, I titled this "Swap confusion". That's because I asked whether or not we were supposed to "decorate" the maze books, and the response was that the group had decided not to "fill" them. Now what does that mean? Nobody would put their own pictures and words in someone else's book, so it could only mean decorating it, right? So I sent mine off plain, with just a few tags to show where they should go. (Apparently I decorated them somehow, or maybe sent some pre-decorated ones, because my partner thanked me for them.)

Anyway, I felt horribly embarrassed when I got this gorgeous mini-scrapbook, having sent only the most basic maze book structure to Cat. I emailed and told her that I would send her another one, and she wrote back saying that she had been under the same impression as I was -- but that now she would do a lot more to her partner's book as well. She told me to keep the maze book -- so maybe I will, and send it to Lenna if I start to run short as the deadline comes up.

I'm in a lot of pain today, having stayed up late to finish my pin-up girls ATC swap. It was really hard to find images that weren't obscene, or too small, or watermarked. But I did find enough, and managed to add some text and embellishments to rise to today's standard. I believe I've already complained that an ATC used to be good enough with an image and some text and maybe one embellishment. Nowadays tney have to have tons of mixed-media art, stamping, papers, and so on. See example above! Anyway, it's lucky Andrew didn't come over (as they were planning originally) because I'm in no shape to do anything but lie here.