Guest Hosting A Swap - My Perspective

Several people have asked me if it was "hard" to guest host a swap.  So here's my perspective on it.

First of all, I was very glad to volunteer, as I was eager to see Mail Me Some Art stay as active as possible through the summer months.

Next, I knew that I would have to stay super organized to do a good job of it.  As I was not adept at using Excel spread sheets on my computer, I opted to make my own paper grid charts with columns for DATE RECEIVED, RECEIVED FROM, WHAT WAS RECEIVED,  SENT TO WHOM, WHAT SENT TO THIS ONE, and DATE SENT OUT.  This was just my approach or strategy for logging mail art in and out.

When MMSA swap art arrived, I immediately dated the envelope.  Then I entered the 1 - 4 post cards with a brief description on my chart.  Next I took pictures of each piece, uploading them into my computer to an MMSA swap file I set up.  I renamed each post card including the person's first name and initial, a brief descriptive word or words, and the swap name, then saved it to the MMSA swap file.

for example, Susie D posies SILVER MUSE

I sent separate emails to the MMSA blogsite host for each person's art, attaching the pictures of the 1 - 4 post cards with each email.

The final step was to make paper strips for each person, with their name and the number of pieces they had sent (i.e. 4) so that I knew how many shuffled pieces to send them back.

I gave them 2-3 weeks after the mail-in date (swap close) to take into account the 4th of July weekend and the slower mail delivery, before I shuffled, redistributed and mailed out the mail art pieces.  Handling all that wonderful mail was really fun.

I hope this has been helpful.  Maybe more people will gather courage and jump in to guest swap a themed exchange on MMSA.