Dear Marg,
Usually with a swap you will start out with one item, for example paper, you send 10 pages to the swap hostess and she takes your paper and sends it back to another swap person and sends you their paper, usually keeping one page for herself. A round robin swap is where you fill a box with your left over goodies and send it first to one girl and she takes out what she likes and puts stuff back in that she has extra, and it continues that way till the box gets back to the person who started it and she then hopefully has new stuff in the box for her. There are also border swaps, sticker swaps, die cut swaps, punchies swaps, etc. Feel free to ask anymore questions you need to. Penny

Marg-

Welcome, welcome! I just started scrapbooking, too and I got my first "bug" and most of my info here. I was hooked (or should I say obsessed) before I did my first page and it's only gotten worse. I read nearly all of the previous messages here- it took several days to go through them all!- and got a TON of great ideas and info. I am working on my first album now- an ABC album- for my 2-1/2 year old daughter. It's 36 pages so far because I'm using all the miscellaneous pictures. I am on "S" and have lots to go! I guess it's not a true ABC album since I have more than one page or layout for each letter, but since it was my first album, I decided it would undoutedly give me the flexibility I needed and, frankly, I can do it however I want to. :) I have been very good at keeping an album (standard with just pictures) from the very beginning for both my daughters, choosing my favorites from each roll as soon as I get them home and sticking them in the album, so I do have chronological albums, although they aren't in scrapbook form. Yet. That's coming in the future. I am going to start my 6-month-old's ABC album when I'm done with this one. By then maybe I'll have more pictures. :)

As far as a swap goes, there's two kinds- groups or one-on-one. For either, you sign up before the deadline, then the coordinator assigns you either to a group or partner. For groups, there may be say, ten in a group and each person sends something out to the nine others, so everyone sends out, as well as receives, nine packages. The other kind is a one-on-one swap (like the one we just did here.) The same idea, but you have one partner and you only send to each other instead of having several in a group. I have been in both kinds and have been very happy with both. The one-on-one was more personal, and perhaps more beneficial, because we were able to email each other and find out what the other was looking for. The group swap was a Christmas ornament swap (so I sent out nine ornaments and received nine different ones in return.) They were both great! I encourage you to participate in the next one we have.

Welcome to scrapbooking obsession and I hope you enjoy the wisdom from the many wonderful people here!

-Sarah