Creative Block, ATC Ramblings

Last night I had a small chunk of time to make ATCs. I had creative block. I started working on five.

I gave up and was disappointed that I had a chunk of time free to make art in yet could not do it.

I went to watch American Idol with my kids and did some work in my art journal. I didn't watch the show, I was watching my journal, I listened to the show, and glanced up to watch just parts of it.

When I woke up this morning the kids were still asleep. I finished up those five ATCs. I had thought I didn't make progress the night before but in just a few minutes I did have five finished ATCs.

Yesterday I sat down and went over all my Swap-bot.com ATC swaps. I then checked the ratings and filled out the ratings for the partners who were supposed to send me ATCs. My tally was at 23 swaps sent out and only 14 were received. I posted some accurate ratings which included "no send's" for some people.

I then received an email from someone saying she sent me 3 ATCs on 1/01/07 and that they should have gotten here by now. She gave me a link to her Flickr account that showed the ATCs that she made.

I was torn as she had formerly a perfect rating on Swap-bot.com. However the rating system is what it is, should I not rate everyone, including those who do "no send's". One issue is the question of if the postal service lost the mail.

In today's mail, I received four envelopes with swaps. Some were for swaps that are not even yet at the deadline to send them out, so they are VERY early. And guess what, that lost envelope was in my mail. It was postmarked 1/03/07 and came about 2500 miles to get here. Perhaps the delay was because the front of the envelope was a dark color and the ink was nearly the color of the background (it was a photograph like a magazine page of a beach scene, cool). I bet that ended up not being able to be read by the postal machines and had to go to a human sorting process. From what I had been told in the past decorative envelopes are fine but the address should be on a label that is white and put on the front. I am now curious about this and will ask my postal office staff about this, and I'll show them the envelope.

In any event I changed the rating for that swapper as she did follow the rules and did send on time so that makes the rating a "5" (not a "1"--nothing received). I also emailed her to let her know this.

It was fun to get four envelopes in the mail today.

Tonight I am not sure if I'll go to bed earlier than usual or stay up and finish up some more ATCs.