Project 12 - A Year of Letters and Love - 2011

.Originally hosted in 2010 by owlbookdreams, reposted with a few different themes for 2011.

Please note that the signup criteria are going to be far stricter this year than they were last year as too many people got flaked on. I hope this will mean fewer trusted swappers are gun-shy of such a great swap.

Swap details:

Warning! This is going to be a bit of a labour intensive swap, but I believe that it will be really rewarding if the effort is put into it. :)

This is going to be a swap where you send 12 letters to your partner all at once meant to be opened one every month in the upcoming year 2010. You may wonder, "What am I going to write about?", but fear not! All will go well.

♥ You will have 12 envelopes sealed and marked with the month, plus one envelope with an introduction letter explaining a little bit about yourself.

♥ Each envelope will have a minimum 1 page of substantial writing. 8.5 X 11 page written on one side lined or blank, but more is definitely welcome and appreciated.

♥ Each envelope will contain in addition a small flat item. This can be anything from found art, a drawing, ATC's, stickers, bookmark, a 4X6 photo, paint chip colours you like. The only catch is that it has to be something you would like to share, or something that your partner would like, and you can't send the same thing twice.

♥ In addition to a small flat item and a letter, include a birthday card on your partner's birthday month, and one other card of your choice (Christmas, easter, valentines-whatever you would like.)

As a guide, in each letter, half will be about yourself, and the other half will be about inspiring, or guiding your partner through the month. Eg. "It's summer now, don't be afraid to go out and get some sunshine."

NOTE: Some of these are the same as 2010, others are new and different to write on. These are just random, open ended ones that I came up with, and if anyone has any other ideas, I'm open to adding them to the list :).

♥January: Begin

♥February: Love

♥March: Create

♥April: Connect

♥May: Inspire

♥June: Progress

♥July: Give

♥August: Miss

♥September: Heal

♥October: Hope

♥November: Remember

♥December: Achieve

I would say that this is half sender's choice, and half partner related. You want to share information about yourself, and you also want to know facts about your partner such as if they are in a relationship, have kids, what their likes and dislikes are because you want to make this special for them. Something that can be started right away are the envelope decorations, cards, and your part of the letter if you'd like, or there should be enough time after partners are assigned to make it.

I will be angelling the swap so let me know if there are any issues. But that being said, the idea is that there are 12 letters (plus an introduction) for 12 months which your partner should receive by January. NB: People have queried this; the point is it takes at least ten days for most things to arrive around the world so a mid-December send-by should mean people receive by January.

Because this is a labour-intensive swap, I will be letting in anyone with at least ten completed craft/package swaps, and ten other completed swaps.

No 1s. If you have threes, please contact me to explain. If I don't receive an explanation or you don't meet the criteria set out above I'm sorry but I will ban you after the deadline. Please don't take it personally but it is a swap which takes a lot of time and effort and if you haven't demonstrated being able to do that it isn't fair on the people you send to to have you in the list of participants. Too many people got flaked on last year and I intend to see everyone have a good time with this this year.

I know it may seem silly to say this, but if you don't think that you can complete the swap on time, don't join. There's nothing worse than being let down and not getting anything. That being said, there's tonnes of time to start and get started, so don't be intimidated if it looks like a lot of work.

Note! There is no cost limit/cost suggestion for this swap. You can very easily spend zero dollars, or very little depending on what you choose to do.