Hosted swaps on art journal pages and handmade cards

Hello all of you, having a great time? Well, I enjoy these days in January. I slowed down on swaps for several reasons, but I still have some going on. It is a lot of fun joining swaps and I thought I would host some for this year. I will be hosting on swap-bot. So I started an art journal swap for every month of this year. Unfortunately I was late to start in January. That's why the first pages will be started in February. The swap for March is ready, so swappers are able to join. There are prompts to give participants a subject to work on. I learned these kind of pages on milliande and I still enjoy it. These pages will be collected and bound in an art journal book. This will be a very lifely book full of pages of different people around the world.

The prompts for February are:
Prompt 1: Describe in one word how you entered/started this year 2012. Express this word on your art journal page.

Prompt 2: Something I did in 2011that I certainly will do/have to do again in 2012.

Hmmm, that gives us something to think about, doesn't it? Well, it is positive thinking and here are my pages.

The end of 2011 brought some difficulties for me. It seems as if everything around me broke. The front doorknob, the bicycles, the washing machine and so on ... Instead of going crazy, I thought of solving my problems and I did. At the end of 2011 I had this feeling of relief, satisfaction. And knowing I am not done yet, I still am satisfied of every solved problem. YES, I CAN!!

In 2011 I had frequently contact with my sister. And that is one thing I would like to continue, because I miss my family a LOT. Thus expressed on the second page. On the labels: keep frequently in touch with my sister who lives in Surinam.

Then I hosted handmade cards swaps at swap-bot with the following themes: First month of 2012 challenge and A bit distressed handmade card swap. I made two cards in each swap, because I am hosting the swaps with the same themes for the Handmade cards group and one for everyone who wish to participate. 

My cards:

I used the first card as an example for the swap.

My cards for the "A bit distressed" theme:

The first card is used as example for the swap. The little heart on the second card is a wooden heart. That is really cute.