$1911

The mods held a very successful Rainbow Swap this summer, and the Mother Earth Swap will close soon. The mods already have a theme for the next swap, but in the meantime I had a bunch of potential ideas for future swaps. Here are my ideas:

1. Fire and Ice
Bracelets can represent:
-Fire (red, orange, yellow)
-Ice (shades of blue, white)
-Fire and ice (combo of above colours)

2. Colours of the countries' flags (would be great for the 2016 olympics)
Use the colours of one country's flag to inspire your bracelet. Can be any country, not just the one you live in.

3. Birds and Butterflies
Use the colours of a bird or butterfly species to inspire your bracelet.

4. Flowers
Choose any pattern on this site that has "flower" as a keyword. There are lots!

5. Gradients
Your bracelet must have a gradient of one or more colours. Gradients are beautiful and awesome, a swap just on gradients would be great!

6. Black and white (or 50 Shades of Grey :D )
Bracelets must have black and white. Optional colours include one or more shades of grey. No other colours allowed. Black and white bracelets are beautiful too!

7. Duotone bracelets
Your bracelet can only have two colours. They can be be two shades of the same colour. You don't need a lot of colours to make a stunning bracelet!

8. Add colours to two-colour patterns
Choose any two-colour pattern on the site and make it with 3 or more colours. Just adding a border as the third colour wouldn't count though. This is a great way to challenge our skills for choosing colours.

9. Patterns with no photos swap
Choose any pattern on this site that doesn't have a photo. There are so many great patterns on this site that have no photos, let's show those patterns some love.

Please share what you think of these ideas, and share your own. Let's create some inspiration for future swaps for the mods!

l love the "patterns with no photos" option and the birds and butterflies ones! Great ideas!

i think it would be cool to have one where you're only allowed to use gradients of one color, like a dark, medium, and light blue, etc.!

The #5 gradients is what I had in mind myself for a future swap :-) That could well be combined with #7, only two colors with their gradients.

I also like the black and white idea though! And the #8 and 9 :-)

Great ideas!

Are there any wishes concerning string amounts? Per bracelet or in total?

@buddleia, oh well, so you kinda thought about my idea :D just mine is not gradients, but "ombre", where you must have at least two shades of one color +white as the must and the black if it's needed :).

That's a really nice list of ideas!
I think duotone/black white or a combo of gradients and black/white/greyscale would make a cool swap.
I also like the Fire&ice idea. The flower theme is great for a spring swap.
And the birds/butterflies theme could even be expanded to animal colors in general, but it's also a clever and colorful idea in itself.

And ofcourse, a photoless pattern swap, that might be the best idea of all! :)
We already have the weekly contests and monthly challenge to do this, but a swap would certainly fit the APAP goal as well.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@redline: you should do your swap idea anyway, you're a mod so you get to set the rules! :) And it looks like kleinevos had a similar idea too.

@kleinevos: I've no preferences for string amounts - I think what's been done for previous swaps works well.

I had an idea for a "Gemstone & jewelry" theme. Pick one, two, (or maybe three) jewel tones to be the "gems" and a few other colors to be the "setting". among the choices for your gems include ruby red, emerald green, turquoise, amber, amethyst, etc. I might try using orange and black to make a tiger eye gem.

The goal of the "setting" colors is to be the background that allows the gem colors to stand out. If you pick a dark gem (obsidian, Jet, etc.) then you would use lighter colors as the setting.
===
Almost all of the bracelets I do are ones without photos, so that would not make much difference to me. The problem with making it part of the swap is that while you are working on your bracelet, someone else could upload a photo, or it might get chosen for a weekly contest. You could get around this problem by not counting photos uploaded after the swap was announced.
===
For an off-the-wall suggestion, how about a requirement that the bracelets have an odd number of strings (9, 11, 13, 15, etc.)? There are a lot fewer patterns constructed for odd number of strings. using them in a swap might encourage more odd patterns to be submitted.

I'm dreaming about "no rules" swap. Without any theme or restrictions about pattern or colours so every participant can make anything they want.
I think themed swaps are great but it'd be cool if sometimes there were swaps that gives participants complete freedom about designing their bracelets.

@buddleia - When I saw you post a suggestion for themes in the ongoing swap, I immediately thought everyone should do something like a flag or just the colors of the country they're from. I think that would really cool!
I also like the "no rules". It would be a very crazy swap.

Great ideas and comments!

@EdBlair - I really like the idea of an odd-string-number swap! The gemstones one is cool too. Good points about a photoless pattern swap. You have a good work around though. And the mods could set the monthly challenge, then start the swap right after that.

@kamyk - A no rules or free-for-all swap would be a great idea!

@ukiedancer - Glad you like the flag idea too. :)