They are off! The first mailing of the Liberate Your Art 2013 Postcard Swap has been dropped into the post box. With the help of five lovely volunteers, we finished in record time. I’m so grateful for their help!
The final number of artist participating this year is 215. 216 if you include me! That’s 1290 pieces of art that will be liberated into the world over the next few weeks. I love this part!
If you weren’t following along on social media yesterday, here’s the photo story of swap day…
Step 1: Lay out the envelopes (already checked in) with the right mix of US/international so everyone gets one from a country other than their own. Maybe two!
When Step 1 is done, there is a line of envelopes snaking all around my house. In order to keep things organized, our poor dog was relegated to the garage for the day. The postcards would not survive her enthusiasm.
Step 2: Remove postcards from envelopes and distribute them to the five neighbors to the right. Labels and stamps stay with their original envelope.
Doing this step right is crucial, or things can get royally messed up. My friend Rainie came earlier than the other volunteers to help me. There would not have been enough room for more than the two of us in some of these tight spaces! The space was a bit tighter than usual, because our family room is blocked off for construction (we are having skylights installed) and all of the family room furniture is squeezed into the bedrooms. That meant all remaining floorspace in our house was lined with envelopes!
Step 3: The rest of my lovely volunteers arrived ~10am to help with the longest part – sticking on the stamps and labels. After a short training session, they were off and running. The volunteers (from left to right): Rainie, Jeannette, Iris, KC (front) and Katy.
A huge thank you to you all!! In no time at all the finished stacks were growing.
Having done most of this myself the last two years (asking my husband to help when he was available), I was amazed at how quickly this went. Right around noon we finished up, which means that about what would have been 12 hours of work on my own was accomplished in 2 hours with the 6 of us working together. The saying “Many hands make light work” is very true!
The reward for the volunteers at the end: Looking through the postcards. I know, you probably think that we look at the postcards as we work, but if we stopped to look at the postcards as you stamp and label, we would never get done!
So there you have it. Swap Day accomplished in record time, along with a record number of artists participating.
The art in the first mailing is liberated. Fly, art, fly!
Big thanks to you and the other lovely gals for all the hard work! Looking forward to the postcards arriving! Valerie
So exciting to see how it is all pulled together…and thank you to you for doing this and to your wonderful volunteers who helped to make such a large job something so much more enjoyable and quick!
Very exciting!! And glad to see that my cards made it….after a faulty printing an confusion over the size….well, USPS overnight made it happen! Thanks for doing this and the inspiration that follows as our art flies, flies….flies!
Oh my goodness!!! What a huge undertaking! It was nice to see your process. I am so very excited about receiving the postcards. I’m glad I found you, and boy have I spread the word. I hope everyone will post the pictures up of the ones they receive so we can see a variety! THANK YOU KAT! AND THANK YOU TO YOUR VOLUNTEERS!
This was so interesting to read – and kind of thrilling, too 🙂 Thank you so, so much to you and your volunteers for doing all this! I can’t wait to start receiving mine over the coming weeks 🙂
Thank you so much for this project. Cannot wait to put my hands on some art.
Not only should I be thanking you again Kat but your wonderful volunteers as well! Bravo and kudos everyone.
I am SO DARN EXCITED! Vibrating with excitement here in Canada 🙂
PS: I don’t do (on purpose) Facebook or Twitter so I really really rely on blog posts. I’ll be doing blog posts too once they begin to arrive.
Wow – what a task! But how cool to be able to see all those lovely postcards. Thanks to you and your volunteers for doing all this. I can’t wait for the first cards to arrive!
AWESOME….I’m so excited!!!! Thank you again to you and your crew of helpers we appreciate you guys!!!
I am so looking forward to my mail the next few weeks!! I can’t thank you enough for all the work you put into this to make so many of us happy. I am already planning on next year!! Thank you Kat so much!
Thank you so much to everyone who helped. I am so excited now.
wow, kat, what an impressive effort!! so nice to view how it is done and so good you invited others to help!!! and you have reached your goal, this year 215 artists participating instead of 192 last year. great!
my sister is participating too, i am so proud of her! she has spread the word among her graphic arts group and they all want to take part next year…!
thank you for this wonderful creative undertaking
Hi Kat, I so totally missed this year’s swap as I’m working on a major art exhibit, book publication, designing a children’s corner of a museum, in short, Sweepy the superdog is in super protest.
I’m sure we will make it next year. Sigh.
I am so glad my postcards I joined the swap, I can hardly wait for the postcards to arrive. thanks to you and all your wonderful volunteers.
Hi Kat, I am so sorry I joined the swap but finally I couldn´t send my cards… this is a wonderful project (and an impressive effort). I wanted to be part of it so much… maybe next year. Z.