Swaps of Glory
Hey all, big news!

With full permission from our loverly mod, I’m bringing to light something that’s been brewing in my head for quite a while now—something that I’m sure will have you searching your mailboxes a lot more often. Keep in mind that it’s completely optional, but it’s a large-scale community project that I thought you might enjoy being a part of. Follow the cut to find out more!



The Project: A year-round not-so-Secret-Santa type dealie for the members of this community, Swaps of Glory (or SoG) is a project in which people are paired together to send each other their arts, crafts, and fics via snail-mail. Shortly after losing my cash monies to the tantalizing evils/goods of eBay, I realized how much fun it is getting handmade stuff in the mail—most of all, how the art of snailmailing between friends is something seemingly not as commonplace as it used to be. I thought, if the online community could commune in the offline, it would give everybody a chance to don some one-of-a-kind BoG merch, and could really give everyone something fun and new to do every month.

How It Works: Members fill out a short form and send it to my email address (hyrulianlegend@gmail.com); I’ll keep a log on my computer and assign numbers to all of the entries I receive. [Note: There will be a set time period for you to sign up, in order for there to be enough people to pair.] Using the patented pick-a-number-out-of-a-hat system, I will match two numbers together at random, and those two people will be paired for the project. [I will send each person the other’s contact info—email address/IM—so that you can talk and arrange things among yourselves, such as addresses and how/when your packages will be sent.] Once a month, there will be a random theme (somewhat similar to the BoG100), and using that random theme, you and your partner can send each other relevant arts/crafts/fics. (Though, anything else you choose to send that isn’t theme-related is certainly allowed!) Once the theme is announced in a monthly post, you can reply to the post with pictures/descriptions of the items you’ve sent and gotten.

What Can You Send?: Pretty much anything! If you and your partner prefer fics over other arts and crafts, you could always hand-write fics and swap notebooks through the mail. As far as crafts go, almost anything’s possible: drawings, paintings, mosaics, sculptures, dolls, collages, scrapbook pages, wood projects, paper-mache, foam, jewelry…there’s a lot to choose from! If your partner prefers a certain pairing or scenario, you could always weave that into whatever you make. Fanmixes, fanvids, and digital art aren't exempt either. :)

The Short Form:

The entry form that you send me is going to look like this:

Name/Screenname:
E-Mail Address:
Instant Messenger:
Pairing Preferences:
Rating Preferences (G-NC-17):
Art, Fanfics, or Both?:

The purpose of rating preferences is to clarify what type of material you’d like to receive in your mailbox. If you’re the only one who sees the mail you get, there probably aren’t any worries. If you live in a large family or your authori-tahs monitor the inbox, you probably don’t want a bunch of NC-17-ness showing up on your doorstep.

The “Art, Fanfics, or Both?” space is just there to let your partner know what kind of material you usually create. If you don’t lift a pencil for anything other than words, then just put “fanfics” to let them know that they should usually expect fics..and so on and so forth.

Everything else is just simple contact info that I’ll pass along to your partner (no real-life addresses please—that info is for you and your partner to sort out).

Important:

As for signing up for this project, the deadline to sign up will be May 24, 2007, 11:59 EST. For the sake of making sure everyone is paired up and that growing numbers don’t confuse the pairing-up process, please make sure to send me your short form by the deadline and not afterwards (I can’t guarantee you’ll have a partner if it’s after the 24th). The last week of May will be spent pairing up all of the entrants, deciding on a theme, and tying up any loose ends of this new project. I will do my best to make sure you all have partners before June 1st, which is when the first theme will be revealed.

I think that’s everything I have to cover for now! If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, problems, flames, icicles, biscuits, Skittles, etc., please don’t hesitate to e-mail me at hyrulianlegend@gmail.com. Sorry for the long read; I just had to get all of the technical stuff out of the way. Keep watching this post on the community profile page for reference and edits (I will be editing this post eventually, to include quick links to each month’s theme and to correct any errors). And once again, a huge thank you to our mod for giving my idea the nod. ^^

<333 to all yalls! :D
~chocopineapple