I've discovered that Swap-Bot is not for me. Of the three swaps I entered all were a bust. Including missed deadlines, very little thought and/or effort put into the swaps or partners just not sending items at all.
Recently, I found a site on the web for swaps of all types. The site is Swap-bot, I looked around a bit at the various swaps and the site in general and signed up last week. Then promptly entered 3 swaps.
The site has a rating system for each swap and in order to participate in many of the swaps a member needs a minimum rating. As a new member, I searched for "newbie" swaps to begin to get ratings. All participants are rated by their swap partners based on meeting deadlines as well as swap criteria, it seems like a system that could work - we'll see how I feel about it after these 3 swaps have been completed.
One of the swaps I entered is an 'inchie' swap. I had not heard of 'inchies' before, the definition is as follows: "an inchie is a square (1" x 1") of paper, cardboard, canvas, fabric, or just about any surface for you to draw, paint, decorate, bead, quilt, or anything else you can think of - to trade and collect". It sounded fun and not terribly complicated or time consuming to execute. I decided I'd use beads - big surprise, I know.
Anyway... here are my 'inchies'. The beaded area is about an inch and I left an edge in case the recipient wants to incorporate the pieces into something else.
This is a vintage black glass flower cab with the tiniest hole in the center that was not meant to have a needle pushed through it, but I made it work!
Next up is this really cool 2 hole copper colored bead with calla lillies. It is surrounded by copper colored and light blue beads.
Here we have a vintage (German?) glass 2-holed bead.
This is a dainty little abalone button, lots of color packed into that little button.
Last, but not least is a little paw print bead made by Earthenwood Studios.
Fun, huh?
