Found Pocket

This swap is to fill a pocket size moleskine cahier with found items. This book has been used for several swaps and comes in packs of 3 so hopefully lots of you will have one around. You may use a different type of journal if you wish, however it must be at least the size of the pocket cahier (14.5 x 9cm) and must have the same amount or more pages (64 sides).

A Found journal is different to the usual art journals we do. You don't paint or decorate the pages at all, there is no need as you will be completely covering every page, BOTH SIDES, with found items which you should stick in with a Pritt stick or whatever glue stick you get in your country. If you find larger items, you can fold them up to make them fit. If you find tiny items, like stickers you should fill up the page with other items. This is not one item per page, this is full pages, front and back on every page.

When thinking about doing this swap, I decided to collect found items for 2 weeks to see how much I could find, to figure out how long we would need for the swap.

To give you an idea of what to include, this is what I've come across in the last 2 weeks: labels, stickers, club flyers, business cards, post-it notes, to-do lists, sweet wrappers, lots of lottery tickets and scratchcards, receipts, cinema ticket stubs, bus tickets, a postcard, a solicitors letter about a house sale, notes, a photograph, lists, envelopes. The majority of the things I found fit into this size book with the exception of the envelopes.

DO NOT INCLUDE anything to do with alcohol, cigarettes or animals, as they smell and people have allergies. You shouldn't be putting anything liquid in, this is for mostly paper items you find.

You don't have to find things on the ground. I found a grocery shopping list in a children's library book one day and one of the post it notes was in a shopping basket at the supermarket. If you do find something on the ground, it's a good idea to clean it with a baby wipe and make sure it is dry else the glue won't stick.

It's important to get variety. 64 pages of receipts would not be interesting for your partner. You shouldn't be making things yourself to put in, so don't write extra shopping lists to fill the pages.

I think 2 months to do this swap is enough time, so I am putting 2 months from today on the sent day and the sign up is 2 weeks away, so you can start collecting now if you are unsure that you will be able to find enough things. It's amazing how much you find when you are doing a swap like this.

Usual high group standards for this swap apply. Basically, don't sign up if you aren't going to send on time. Late senders and those with lower ratings will be banned. To me, if you have a 1 or a 3 there is a reason for it and I won't risk it for the good of the others in the group. We have had so many journal swaps sent late recently and people flaking and we are trying to weed these people out. We are swapping in a group to make it safer and are doing our best to keep the group safe. It's disheartening to get messages from people with excellent records who work really hard on a journal and don't get anything back and message me to say they won't swap journals ever again. I have been flaked on 4 journal swaps since March, 2 of those within this group and if you're gonna flake on the co-ordinator of the swap, you are gonna get kicked out of the group!

If you have any comments please leave below, however I am going on holiday tomorrow until 25th July, so will answer when I get back but I think it's pretty self explanatory. Feel free to answer each others questions and give each other advice or ideas.

If you need inspiration for things to put in, have a look at the Found website. This is a group of people that have been publishing a magazine of found items for many years. You can also get the magazine on Amazon in the UK, so maybe elsewhere too. The site is at www.foundmagazine.com