handmade swaps

I love getting mail (the non-junk, non-bill kind of mail) more than anything. So when I stumbled across a website called Swap-bot, I was instantly hooked.  Swap-bot is a site that facilitates trades between people. Some of these swaps are for random store bought things, but I skip those and go straight for the handmade swaps.  The way it works is simple.  Log on, search through swaps for something that interests you and when you find one you want to participate in, join it. Usually a swap requires you to send something to 2 or 3 people and in exchange, you’ll receive the same number of things in the mail.  The swap listing spells out the rules and the deadlines for the exchange.

a polaroid swap that had to include a song lyric

I’ve done all sorts of swaps from handmade holiday ornaments to exchanges of handwritten letters, but my favorite are the art postcard swaps.  I love coming home from work, sorting through the mail and spying a handmade postcard in the stack.  Sometimes the things you receive are amazing, sometimes they aren’t, but regardless, I love the effort behind all of them.  It’s so interesting to see what a person’s take is on the particular theme called out in the swap.  Some of my favorite swaps have been “a postcard not on paper” for which someone sent an actual flip-flop which was pretty silly, but fun and “photograph of a moment in your day” which was a neat way to get a peek into a stranger’s life. It was so interesting to see what moment or tiny detail people chose to capture.

my "non-paper postcard" painted on found wood

I also like swapping because it keeps me creating on a regular basis and the projects are generally small and not terribly time consuming. Before I send things out, I scan a copy to keep for myself as a way to remember the little artworks that I’ve created.  The swaps pictured in this post are some of my creations. If swapping sounds interesting to you, I recommend checking Swap-bot out.  Once you’re hooked, you can also create your own swaps for others to join in on.

Next up on my list?  A cemetery photo swap that coincides with Dia de los Muertos!