If you're new, you buy or make a pocket-size journal and you write your swap bot username + your address on the front page or the back page or in the cover. You fill the first two pages with your altered text art, and send it on to your swap partner. You receive someone else's journal and you fill it with 2 pages of altered text, and you hold on to it until the next altered journal swap. Then you send it to your swap partner, and so on.

If you've joined before, it's the same as the above, only without the part where you make your own journal.

The catch is: these are altered text journals. So you stick a book page (or a newspaper page/clipping, or a magazine page/clipping, any text will do) onto the journal page and you alter it. Draw, paint, stamp - you know, artsy stuff. You are free in your design. You can go about it like those altered text ATCs, or you can treat it like an altered dictionary page, or you can illustrate the text, or you can just freestyle it. (By the way, this is a really cool site for inspiration.) Whatever you do, make sure it remains obvious that you used book pages. If you're going to cover it entirely with paint and pictures, there is no point in using book pages. So some text must show. The book pages can be in any language you like.

Official pocket sizes are: 13x20cm or 5x8inch. They can be a little bigger but not much, and they can certainly be smaller.

No more than 30 pages per journal (or if there are more pages, make it a lightweight journal), and you follow the journal owner's lead in regards to using front and back, spreads, front and front, etc.

About Rating & 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 a re-send, depending on the circumstances). You can find whose journal you were supposed to receive in the forum. If the journal never arrives, please arrange a new journal. Either let the re-send be the replacement journal, buy/make one yourself, or 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.

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.