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A to Z Passport Art Journal Swap EDITED

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A to Z Passport Art Journal Swap  EDITED
Group:Pocketsize Journal Swappers
Swap Coordinator:AynE (contact)
Swap categories: Art  Postage Stamps  Journals 
Number of people in swap:13
Location:International
Type:Type 3: Package or craft
Last day to signup/drop:May 26, 2014
Date items must be sent by:June 17, 2014
Number of swap partners:1
Description:

This idea for an art journal swap came from an art journal that Pouffia did. The inside front cover had rubber stamped postmarks from different countries and I thought that an art journal swap that combined several of my favourite things, maps, stamps, and the alphabet would be an amazing swap.

EDIT: Since several of you have contacted me about doubling up the countries, each partner doing two countries instead of one to shorten the time the journals are out, 12 partners instead of 25, which will reduce the chances of loss in the mail, etc.

SO:

As the owner of the "passport" you would decorate the first four pages of your passport with Countries that starts with the letter A and B. These include the following countries and here is an A-Z List of countries link.

Afghanistan

Albania

Algeria

American Samoa

Andorra

Angola

Anguilla

Antarctica

Antigua and Barbuda

Argentina

Armenia

Aruba

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Bahamas

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belarus

Belgium

Belize

Benin

Bermuda

Bhutan

Bolivia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Botswana

Brazil

Brunei Darussalam

Bulgaria

Burkina Faso

Burundi

Swap requirements would be that an image of a map or portion of a map and either the flag or stamps from that country would have to be used. Since all you have to do is Google images for maps, stamps, coats of arms, flag, etc and all sorts of amazing images pop up it would not be difficult, as they do not have to be real stamps, maps, etc unless you have them and want to use them.

The other requirements of the swap are as follows:

Journal has to be 6 x 5 inches (18 x 15 centimeters) or smaller. Moleskines have a package of 3 ruled journals that are 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches that are perfect for this swap. I have weighed two different journals that fall within the swap requirements, at this size they weigh between 1 to 2 ounces empty.

You cannot decorate the cover of the journal until it has been returned to you, this is to keep the weight of the journal to a minimum during the swapping process. Also please keep your additions to the 'passports' limited to paper, rubber stamped, inked and hand drawn images. Adding a coin from a certain country might be a nice thing to do but if you add the coin at letter D then everyone is paying for the weight. An image of a coin would be a better option.

What is below appears to be the standard Pocket-sized Journal information that Pouffia wrote, since it is so practical and informational, I asked her if I could copy it because why reinvent the wheel when it works so well, but I have amended it to work for these swaps.

Essentially...

...you send out a journal that will be forwarded to 12 other swappers who'll do two entries each before it gets returned to you.

You will buy or make a pocket-sized journal that has at least 30 two page spreads to work with. You must fill the first two spread pages of your own journal. You can label each set of spread pages A, B, C, D, etc.

Write your name and address (and email address in case you move) on the front or the back, and a note asking to return the journal to this address when it's full.

About Rating & Flaking & Lost Journals

Please, communicate! If the journal doesn't arrive, do contact me but also contact your swap partner. Before you rate a 1: Try to come to an arrangement (for example, wait a bit longer or arrange a re-send, depending on the circumstances). If the journal never arrives, please ask the person to whom the journal belonged to send you a new one. If all else fails I'd be willing to send you a replacement journal myself, but please try to solve it yourself and keep me updated in the process.

If you have questions or if you can't come to an agreement, do let me know. After all that's what I'm here for. Only rate a 1 if you never received anything after considerable time and your swap partner isn't willing to come to some sort of arrangement. However it is extremely important you rate your swap partner. So while you shouldn't rate a 1 as soon as you can, it is important you do if appropriate. Rating a 5 upon receiving the journal is no less important. It lets your swap partner know the journal arrived and it helps build a good Swap Bot standing, which is something we all deserve since we put in a lot of work.

Last but not least, if you sign up and swap partners are assigned, you have to send a journal out. Which means it's best to drop from the swap or not sign up at all as long as the journal hasn't arrived. It's not a problem if you skip a swap (or more), as long as you don't vanish from Swap Bot without a trace.

Swap Frequency

I am going to try to keep 3 weeks in between send deadlines and sign up deadlines. They may deviate a little here and there and that may change as we see how far and how long it takes for these to arrive to each other. Also, you'll now have 2 weeks to fill your two pages and send the journal out. If you're worried about not being able to participate in the follow-up swap because you haven't received the journal read the above.

Communicate & be available

If you're delayed for whatever reason, let your swap partner (and me) know. If you're going to be on vacation or in a place where you don't have internet access, let your swap partner and me know, or put it in your profile. Do check your email and/or your Swap Bot account for messages. If you suddenly seem to have fallen off the face of the earth, alarm bells start ringing.

How to rate your swap partner?

If you receive a journal from someone who didn't fill two pages, you rate a 3. I don't like setting rules for ratings but if you didn't fill two pages you did not meet the swap requirements. If swappers pass on journals without filling 2 pages, then they will be missing a country and having a passport filled from A to Z is the whole point of the swap.

If you don't receive anything at all, you rate a 1. Of course taking in consideration the time it may take for the journal to reach you.

Returning a journal that is not full

You can't return journals to owners before the last country has been added. If you send it back, you will have no journal to forward to your swap partner. So don't send a journal back to its owner unless you are dropping from the swap series or you have just added Zimbabwe or Zanzibar to the passport. Of course this does not cover exceptional circumstances.

Shipping Costs

Try to keep the journal lightweight. It helps to keep shipping costs low. However, since we fill these journals, postage will go up and mailing these journals will cost more than the average letter. Keep this in mind.

My Journal is Lost

The thing with these swaps is that you may not know where your journal is. Since each journal has at least 30 two page spread, which means at least 25 swap partners will have it, it's going to take some time before it gets returned to you. I suppose the best thing you can do is sit back, relax, and wait.

If for some reason you must get a hold of the person who has your journal because you're moving unexpectedly or something like that, the only solution I have is except for the first swap, when you get the passport please contact the owner and let them know that you have their passport in your possession, that way, everyone will know who has their passport.

Swappers may not always join the next swap in line. They may have joined C-D but not E-F. Unfortunately there is nothing to do about that. However the large majority of swappers are still reliable people, so trust that the journal gets forwarded or get in touch with the swapper that has your journal (if you can trace him/her). If you sent your journal out a few swaps ago, you could ask the swap partner you had then and get in touch with his/her swap partner of the next swap, and so on, and follow the chain. The one thing that I would ask is, if you get a passport that does not have the country in front of the one you are doing, such as you are doing D and there are two blank pages at C because the swapper didn't sign up for C, be nice, be an angel and fill those two pages, that way, we can sort of self angel as we go along.

Of course there is always a possibility your journal just gets lost. This is the risk involved. If that happens, let me know and I will try to put together a journal for you, but I would prefer not to have angel too many of these.

I do not know if I will be able to send out a message every time these swaps get posted, hopefully I can work that out with Pouffia.

But please do have fun as we travel around the world via our passports.

Discussion

PrairieKittin 05/16/2014 #

If everyone does a page swap, then the "passport" has to have at least 52 pages. Correct?

Star7Lily 05/16/2014 #

Wise girl, good point!

Star7Lily 05/16/2014 #

I expect if the journal fills up completely and it comes home to you, one can always glue another same size to the back cover like the customs passport people do, for business travellers. After it is returned back to you when the second part is full rhen you can add your cover. I love the look of that journal in the picture. I cannot wait to get started! How exciting!

Please would you ensure the participants are genuine and have a proper track record of journal swaps. There is such precious work going into this one. Xx

AynE 05/16/2014 #

I must have addressed this in the thread instead of here on the swap, sorry. I have not hosted a swap in a while but it will come back to me.

The journals that I have been mentioning, the Moleskines and the GreenInspired.com ones that I purchased at Target have enough pages, the Moleskines comes in a package of 3 for $9.00, have 64 pages a piece and weigh 1 ounce. The GreenInspired.com ones have 84 pages, come in a package of 2 for $8.00 and weigh 2 ounces. So it should be fairly easy to find a journal that is small, lightweight and inexpensive.

My concern with a two part passport A - L and M - Z is this. I am going to use names to sort of simply things.

My journal has made it to @PrairieKittin and she just did Lithuania. So she sends my A - L journal back to me but for some reason it gets delayed in the mail. I don't know that she sent it to me, either she forgot to tell me or I didn't read my e-mails or something happened, vacation, illness, snow storm with power lines down (no insult, stuff just happens) So I finally get it and now I have to get a new journal and send it to @PrairieKittin so she can send it to her next partner for the M country. If I fail to send the M - Z journal so @PrairieKittin gets it on time then I have hosed her up from continuing in the swap because she has nothing to send on. And if that sounded complicated on paper imagine what it would be like in real time mailing internationally. I know that we have people signing up from Canada, South Africa, Belgium and America. I think one journal might be the best way to go.

Also, @StarLily I am going to create an excel worksheet and log who gets the original journal, then from there I should be able to track who gets it next. One of the swap criteria is for everyone to please let the original owner of the Passport know that you have it once you receive it. So you will rate the person who sent it to you and inform the owner that you have it.

Yes, these swaps are a bit complicated but because it is a group and we are all in it, I figured we all sort of know that they are time intensive and are precious, not only to the one who owns it but to all of us who have put work into them.

AtelierEem 05/16/2014 #

So when will be decided if we make A and B, or just A?

Pouffia 05/16/2014 #

So sad I can't join in, I hope I'll be able to do this some time!

AynE 05/16/2014 #

I am open to doing A & B to get it started. You can log your preference here, doing one country at a time or doing two to shorten the length of time the entire journal will take to complete.

I will also send out an e-mail asking folks what they would like to do as well in case not every one sees this message.

smmarrty 05/17/2014 #

I was thinking that 2 pages/countries at a time might speed up the process. So a "yes" for me.

AtelierEem 05/18/2014 #

All for A an B. I'm starting my journal today! Maybe it's an idea to change the swap name and add A and B. So in the following rounds you can name them C an D, etc?

marchy 05/18/2014 #

Ooh! Im also up for 4 pages: 2 per country, per swap. I dont think the swap should be named A-B and then C-D considering what AynE mentioned earlier. Some people may not join every swap, and would just continue with the last letter in the passport they receive. If I understood correctly? Anyhoo YES from my side for 2 pages per country, 2 countries per swap turn. :)

Star7Lily 05/19/2014 #

Thank you for that concise and clear guide. I am all up for 2 countries 4 pages done. The example you have used has ideas popping up at the oddest times :) Yes i see we are all seasoned swappers. Fingerscrossed Is looking and sounding really safe. Cheers! And well done

AtelierEem 05/19/2014 #

@marchy in the guidelines it says to angel for 'missing countries' that's why I thought it would be handy to put the Letters we are doing in the swaps title. Or did I misunderstand @AynE

And I was asked a question I couldn't find an answer for in the guidelines: Is it a closed swap or can you join from round 2 or further along? It's just that you than would have to send in a journal that has caught up with the letters that have allready been done. Not to complicate things, just trying to help:-)

And I'm so excited, my journal is made and I spend a lovely sunday afternoon checking my stamps for countries with A en B. Love this kind of journalswap! So thanks for making this happen @AyenE

AynE 05/19/2014 #

Dear @AtelierEem I as well have been pondering the same question. Close the swap or allow others to join at a later date. These are two of the thoughts I have on this matter:

  1. Allow folks to join the swaps up to say M-N, which is the half way point.

  2. Leave the swaps open right through Yemen and Zimbabwe or Zambezi. Then at the end of the original round of swaps after everyone's journal has been returned to them, we can always do a series of make up rounds, as in A - E, F - J, K - O, P - T, U - Z, or something like that.

Obviously, that is going to lengthen the swap for some folks or if you are the only one with missing countries then no one else is going to sign up.

I prefer the method I mentioned in the swap, if you see an empty page, angel it if you can. Obviously if someone signs up at Y-Z then no one would expect their partner to angel all those pages and I will clarify that in the swap requirements or criteria as we progress.

I think because of the nature of this swap, we will start out with a core of I am hoping at least 15 people and then not lose anyone except to an unfortunate event, if there is a gap in the flow, then if the next two partners each angel a page, the gap would be filled in without too much stress on anyone's part.

And, if nothing else works then I will send out a call for a couple of angels and we can just angel pages that way.

I am trusting in the fact that we are all seasoned swappers who are in this group because we have the patience and dedication to see a swap like this through to the end.

I was thinking about starting a FaceBook page so we can post pictures of the pages we do so everyone gets to see the artwork. Does that sound like a good idea or too much spoilers for everyone?

AtelierEem 05/21/2014 #

I agree. Also about the Facebookpage. When you only post your own contribution and don't mention who's journal it is, the pages can be used as examples and inspriation.

PrairieKittin 06/ 6/2014 #

A lot of the groups have Flickr pages for people to post pictures if they want.

BluGinhm 06/19/2014 #

Yay! Have sent out mine and received my first partner's lovely journal - @Fandanie I'm ready for pages C and D! When will they be up?

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