The Great 12 Tags Project that turned into 24 Tags

Sometime in late October or early November 2015, sister called me with an idea to make 12 tags for each other.  She had compiled a list of "flavor of the month" for each month of the year.  The premise was that we would each make one tag per month ... no telling each other what theme we chose, though.

Then someone (me, probably) had the knuckleheaded idea to make a person/place/thing set of tags as well.  Each month, I took a photo of a person, one of a place, and one of a thing.  They then went on their merry way to her via email; sometimes the pictures didn't quite make it and needed to be resent (on both our parts).  She did likewise.  We then each chose one of the photos to use without telling the other which one we picked.  The photo then was used for that month's person/place/thing tag.

One of the rules was that the photos had to be taken by me (or her).  That made it difficult to take selfies since my arms aren't too long. I also didn't realize that we were actually supposed to use the photo of the person/place/thing; I took it to be just an inspiration for the tag.  Luckily, that only happened for one month. Another rule was that the person had to be a real person; I didn't have any trouble with that until one month when I forgot and took a picture of a mannequin.  Oh, well, that just became my thing picture.  Problem solved!

Now, you need to understand something.  The "rules" and conditions were developed with the finesse of a treaty between two countries.  One of us made a suggestion, and the other either agreed upon it or we did our best to come to a compromise.

Here's a portion of our emails:

GUIDELINES:

All tags are to be the same size – and as close to Tim’s as possible. 

No journaling on back of tag. 

The Flavor of the Month tags and one of the P/P/T tags are to be combined, with the P/P/T tags behind the Flavor of the Month tags. 

We can choose whichever event is listed after the month (below.) 

P/P/T tags do not have to be relevant to any event of the month. 

We can choose whichever one of the three P/P/T picture we choose to embellish. 

All tags are to be bound however you choose. 

Bound tags must have a front and a back cover – a total of 26 tags. 

All P/P/T pictures are to be e-mailed to each other on or before the 15th of each month.  Picture is to be used on the following month’s tag. 

Completed project is to be mailed no later than December 1, 2016.  Once package is received, we must be on the phone with each other as we open – receipt may be different days so the one that receives first, gets to open first.

The first month of our project was December; the pictures were out by the 15th of November.  Boy, was it easy to start the project!  I zipped right through the first month's two tags. January was equally easy.  Then all of a sudden things at school started getting crazy, what with state testing and all that stuff.  I panicked quite a few times but plodded along.

Summer vacation saw me spending more time working on the project.  I even was ahead of the game with photographing the tags and scheduling posts for later on.  I had a cool spreadsheet to keep track of everything.  I had a Word document that kept all of the writing that I included on the posts.  I had the photographs all organized by date.  Then the unthinkable happened.  My external hard drive disappeared.  Talk about panic!  But I was so glad that I had already posted about half of the tags.  I found the EHD, but the files were nowhere to be found. 

Rather than binding my tags into a booklet, I decided to use Tim's Ideaology Clip Carousel, placing the theme tags on the top and the p/p/t tags on the bottom.  I created a cute tag to place on the top circle.

The package went out on time.  I had planned to keep it assembled and packed with a ton of peanuts surrounding it in the hope that she would only need to cut the tape to open the box. After a lot of discussion with my family, they convinced me to package the tags individually and send the project for her to assemble.  I guess I am glad I decided to do that instead. 

Be sure to check back tomorrow to see the first of 24 tags!