backtack 3 blogroll is live

Go on check it out. I've had a blast putting them all together and looking at all your blogs.

MATCHUPS HAVE NOW GONE OUT

This is just a quick email to say that everyone who has signed up successfully will now have received their matchup emails. Nicole has literally worked through the night to send these out, so she deserves a massive pat on the back, flowers, chocolates, and good wishes for her effort.

Please check your addresses and tell us if something is wrong. We also strongly advise that you contact your person within the next few days and let them know you exist. Please also double check with them how they like their address to be written, particularly for those who live in outside the US - I know some of the addresses have loads of commas and full stops in them and it will always pay to get it right now rather than in 2 months time when your parcel has gone missing.....(which we sincerely hope doesn't happen).

We have people playing from all over the world - from Sweden to Japan, Australia to Portugal, and apparently the entire city of Portland in the USA is playing too. And there's many more inbetween and it's been wonderful to see where people are coming from, and the different blogs. We'll get the blogroll updated shortly as well so you can all peruse the players as they work.

I guess this means...

GAME ON!!!

SIGNUP UPDATE

Nicole and I have been sifting through names and emails and addresses of everyone who signed up and wanted to update you all on progress.

We know you're all keen to know whether you got in, and I've answered a number of emails personally, but just can't answer all of them in the time we have had. If you did not make it in, I would have contacted you immediately to let you know. Anyone else who sent us an email as instructed made it in, so you can all breathe a sigh of relief!!

Nicole is very busy sending out matchups over the next day or two. Please understand this takes hours and hours of her time, and if you don't get it today, you may get it tomorrow. Please don't get anxious, we're moving through it as fast as we can.

We'll post again here to say that all matchups have been sent out so you know when it's officially done.

happy playing and we are so excited to see what you guys come up with!!

SIGN UPS ARE NOW CLOSED!

Well that was quick! We are completely blown away at how quick that was - 1 hour and 9 minutes!! We have now reached our 100 place capacity for backtack3 and would like to announce that sign ups are now officially closed. We will not accept anymore signups. We’re sorry if you missed out, but hope you enjoy seeing what gets created in the meantime, and maybe we’ll see you back here next year for backtack4! For those of you who have signed up, we will get matchups out by the 18th April, and happy playing!

AND WE HAVE LIFT OFF

Did we tickle your interest with our BT3 theme? We’re pretty keen about it, and can’t wait to see the results, and from the feedback we’ve got, you guys seem pretty thrilled as well. Guess you now want to sign up right? OK. Here’s what you need to do, and understand, before signing up.

Please read our Terms of Agreement Disclosure Statement which follows::

As we have made explicitly clear at the start of each backtack, your decision to sign up is your agreement and commitment with us, and your backtack partner that you will follow through with that commitment – you will email regularly, you will email thanks and notification, you will send a parcel within the dates already noted, and you will give as good as you expect to receive. We take this seriously, your partner takes it seriously, and so should you. We will ask again, that if anything is coming up during the play time that could affect your ability to follow through on your commitment – are you moving? Going away? Having a baby? Going through life issues? Know that you’re not good at emailing people? that you seriously consider whether this is right for you. This message isn’t getting through to a number of people, and for that reason we are adding some changes to how things are handled once you sign up.

First, this will no longer be anonymous. Your blog address will be sent to your partner with matchups. Second, if your parcel has not arrived with its recipient by 2 weeks after close of play we will publicly list on this blog your name/blog address until you contact your partner and come to an agreement, or a parcel is received and we are notified. We want you to be more accountable to the person you are sending to, and we think that is only fair. We do keep records of non-performers, and we do cross check that list with sign ups. We will also warn you that there is a move amongst organizers of these swaps across the blog world to have a central blacklist to try and curb some of the non-performance issues which inevitably occur with operations like this. We cannot make someone email someone else, we cannot make someone send something and we cannot find lost parcels in the post, so please think carefully before signing up, and if something comes up, let us know immediately so we can take action.

Now we have the heavy stuff out, let’s sign up!
Please send the following information to this address :: bt3.signup@gmail.com . Do not send it to any other address – we will only accept sign ups to this address. Please do not send general enquiries to this address either - we have an email address for that, and it is located in the sidebar.

1. Your full name for mailing purposes
2. Your full address for mailing purposes including your postcode and your country.
3. Your blog URL
4. A statement of whether you will, or will not, send internationally. If you don’t say, we’ll assume you’re happy sending international.

We will notifiy on this blog only when we have reached 100 places and sign ups will be officially closed. We will accept no more sign ups after that time. Good luck, and we’ll see you on the otherside!!

BACKTACK 3 REVEALED

You keen? You ready? You wanna know what's going on?

Welcome to BT3 - our third run of the very popular Backtack series. We think we've come up with something which will really get people to think and create within some tight parameters. By restricting what you can do and use we hope to get some amazing interpretations from some very creative and clever people (umm, that's you guys by the way).

This time we'd like to to make a softie.
But not any softie.
The softie can be any pattern, but we've found three we'd like you to consider using first. Mainly because they're cool patterns, but also because we think they'll work with what we want you to do with the softie. Hillary Lang at Wee Wonderful's has very kindly agreed for us to use her two free patterns for the 'wee bunny' and the 'pointy kitty'. This is extremely generous of her, and we know her patterns will be fantastic for this. If you use her patterns we would appreciate you respecting her rights as an artist, her ideas, and her patterns and do not alter them. But don't go using Hillary's bandwidth, we'll send you copies of the pattern with your matchups. Second, we have a pattern we will make available only to those who sign up. We will tell you it's a very cute bunny pattern, very sweet and quite easy.

The softie has certain restrictions though. You could sense some catches coming couldn't you?! This is where we get tough. These are all non-negotiable, so read this carefully, because we want you to make the softies in a specific way.

1. They must be made from black and/or white materials. How much of either you use is up to you. It can be plain, or patterned. It can be knitted, felted, plastic whatever your imagination comes up with. We want you to get creative here, and think outside the box.
2. 1 additional colour - and one only - may be used, but it cannot comprise more than 20% of the final piece.
3. The softie cannot be any higher than 20cm
4. You must attach 5 buttons of your choice, in locations also of your choice, to the softie.
5. You must include on your softie somewhere the first initial of the person you are sending this to. So if you are sending to Sarah, you must have a letter 'S' somewhere on the softie. Again, use your imagination.

Clear? Good. Out of sameness comes diversity, and just as every snowflake is different yet the same, we hope to get many different, but same, softies. This isn't to everyone's tastes, so if it's not sitting well with you, please don't sign up.

If the concept grabs you, and we hope it will, we'd love you to sign up. But first you'll need some important information about dates and stuff. The following are set in concrete and we will be strict about them.

Sign ups: Start 9.00am Australian EST on April 11th. That means you need to work out your time zones, time differences and date differences. That time and date should allow everyone a chance to sign up. Do not attempt to sign up before hand. We will delete all emails attemtping to pre-sign.

On the 11th April we will post that sign ups are open on this blog only. In that post will be a new email dress specifically for signing up. We will only take sign ups from that email address, so take a careful note of it. The address will not be made public prior to that date. Sign ups are limited to 100 people - we cannot cope with more than that number. If you believe you had pre-signed during a small window of opportunity to do so last year, you will have received an email from us already asking if you still wish to be involved. Those numbers will not be included in the 100 places available. If you have not received an email from us, you need to sign up as instructed above.

Matchups: Will be made and sent out to reach you by 18th April. Be ready to play…

Playtime: Because we begin play 20th April with a finish date of June 10th. You must ensure your finished goods arrive with their person by June 10th.

If you can't make those dates, will be travelling, or moving house, or you know you have some life issues coming up, we'd like to ask that you carefully consider whether being part of this is a good idea for you. We take it that you signing up is your commitment to this, us and your partner. You are part of a chain, and it is upsetting and rude to not deliver on that commitment. Similarly we expect you treat everyone involved with respect, compassion and manners - email regularly, let us know if there's a problem as soon as it happens, email to let your person know they're parcel has been sent, and email a thankyou. Small amounts of kindness go a long way.

As in previous backtack's we require you to have a blog - don't have one? Start one now! We expect you to post regularly, show us what you're doing, and post what you sent and received. We also require a maximum of 2 photos of finished product be sent to us for inclusion in the flickr album. More details on that later though.

We hope you'll get excited about this, and look forward to seeing you all play!