Art Journal Pages - My First Swap

First of all, if you are one of the 10 participants in the christian paper artists yahoo group's art journal page swap -- you may want to skip this post so that you can be surprised by what arrives in your mailbox :) 


For the rest of you, I thought I would share the pages that I made for my very first art swap! The idea was to create 10 art journal pages and send them to the host, who will assemble and bind together one from each participant before mailing them back. Of course, the naysayer in me had a hard time even signing up for the swap, but I'm glad I did. It took MUCH longer than I anticipated to make my pages, but I think that's because I tend to think too much about it all -- AND because I decided to decorate the backs of all my pages, which really meant I was making 20 journal pages instead of 10. Anyway, here are the results -- largely influenced by my spiritual journey this summer. Each front is followed by its back side:

I recycled some work that I've done in the past, which made the process a bit faster. But I still felt like I was rushing through at the end to meet the deadline. Oh, how good it felt to be making art, though! I'm thinking about participating in a Christmas ornament swap -- it's just the time factor that worries me. I still feel guilty taking time to be creative. 


Anyway -- I'm really excited to see what appears in my mailbox in a few weeks! Art swaps are such a cool idea -- committing to making art AND getting real mail from other artists all over the world! How sweet is that???


Have you ever participated in an art swap -- or any other kind of creativity exchange? What were your experiences?