Merry Go Round Swap

One of my favorite swaps to host and participant in is one called "Merry Go Round" Actually the Merry Go Round has become my favorite type of swap! How the swap works is all the participants choose a stamp they own that they would like to see what other people will do with the image. You could choose a stamp that you bought and just never used because you have not been able to decide how to use it or it could be a favorite image of yours but you have run out of ideas and would like some new ones. Either way, you stamp an image for each one of the players and mail it in to the host of the swap. The host then in return will send each participant one of every one's image for the exception of your own. Once you receive the images you then proceed to make a card using each image. Once done you mail your card creations to the host who then will send your original images back to you now made into cards by all the creative players in the swap. This is always the most challenging type of swap for me. Most often you will get images to work with that are not your style and taste or something you would never buy. So it becomes a real challenge designing a card with that image. There have been many times that I have worked on an image only to find that I liked it after I worked with it and wanted to go buy the stamp for myself. It is also fun to get back your original image and see how the other swap players interpreted your image and what they did with it. I am currently hosting a Merry Go Round swap on the CK site and there have been some fun and challenging images sent in. Below are some samples from some of the past Merry Go Round swaps I have been in. All but one are images that I would never thought to buy. I found a couple of them to be quite challenging....which is what makes this type of swap so fun!
I colored this image with Prismacolor colored pencils and added some lace and ribbon to add to the Victorian look of the image.

Also colored with Prismacolor colored pencils, I found this image to be fun to work with.

This image is a sunflower collage and I thought it would be fun to cut it into thirds, double mat it and add a plaid ribbon. Image is colored with Derwent Inktense Watercolor pencils.

I really struggled with this image and had a hard time deciding what to do with it. Image is colored with Prismacolor colored pencils and tripled matted on printed paper.

If you enjoy a challenge and the opportunity to work on images you don't own.....you should try a Merry Go Round Swap sometime. They can be a lot of fun!