Happy New Year + 2018 Secret Valentine Exchange!! {CLOSED}

UPDATE: Sign-ups are now closed. We have 576 participants!!!!! WOW. Ute and I are busily getting all the partner information together and will send out emails by January 16th. If you signed up but didn’t receive a confirmation email from Google Forms, please contact us at secret.valentine.exchange[at]gmail.com and we will trouble-shoot!

---

Happy 2018, my friends! I’m having a hard time believing that we are now launching our 5th annual Secret Valentine Exchange!! Ute and I are teaming up as always, and we’re delighted to be hosting this non-traditional Valentine’s handmade event! Based on the Scandinavian Secret Santa tradition called Julklapp, our first SVE brought 40 participants together and last year we had over 400 participants! SVE is such a fun way to spread love and cheer through handmade goods and we’ve been blown away by the level of creativity every year. If you’ve taken part before, the following information will be familiar (thank goodness for copy-and-paste), but we’ve added a couple of new points so please read through the post.

SVE is super simple! Sign up using the Google form at the bottom of this post and Ute and I will assign Secret Valentines (we’re part of the gift exchange fun too). We’ll send you the info about the person for whom you’ll be making a gift, but you’ll be in the dark in terms of who’ll be sending you a gift. With the ever-increasing number of participants, we found out last year that one of the most important aspects is to ensure that participants enter valid emails and shipping addresses. We’d hate for people to miss out because we can’t contact you or get the parcels out to you!

IMPORTANT POINTS:

1. Gifts should be made with materials you already have on hand (we encourage recycling and repurposing). This is not meant to be an expensive project for anyone. It probably goes without saying, but please make the gift yourself.

2. You must be willing to ship internationally.

3. The gift should fit into a medium to large envelope to keep shipping costs down. There are no expectations to send more than one gift, but in the past couple of years we’ve noticed that folks love to include multiple small gifts, and that’s wonderful too. We know that shipping can get spendy if you’re sending internationally. If this is of concern to you, please do a quick check on average shipping costs from US to UK, let’s say, to determine whether this is something that you want to partake in.

4. Keep it fun and easy! No need to stress about what to make, although I know from personal experience that it could feel a little nerve-wracking to send your handmade creation if it’s not something you do regularly. Trust me, the gift will be received happily as many, many participants will attest. I know that quite a few tears of appreciation have been shed (I’m raising my hand high up here). There’s something magical about opening up a handmade gift, don’t you think?

Now, things have gone above and beyond expectations over the last four years, but with so many participants in far flung places on the globe, there were some delays with a number of shipments and a few missed packages last year. If you’re sending to a particularly remote place from where you live, it’s a very good idea to build in extra days for shipping and to add tracking if at all possible. Also, we know that life gets busy and stuff comes up. Ute and I are both flexible folks and we understand if gifts may end up a little late or if there are extenuating circumstances. We’ve both been there. However, because we want to ensure that everyone is giving and receiving, please only sign up if you know you can definitely commit to making and shipping a gift.

To get into the spirit of the event and for sneak peeks, use hashtag #2018sve on IG, but remember, it’s not necessary to have any kind of online presence. The idea was borne out of a desire to connect people in a way that no digital medium can accomplish, and we’ve learned that many friendships emerged from the Secret Valentine Exchanges. This makes Ute and me indescribably happy.

The process is as easy as can be:

1. To sign up, fill out the questionnaire below by Wednesday, January 10th.

2. We’ll take care of assignments and send out the Secret Valentine info to all participants by Tuesday, January 16th.

3. Make something fabulous and ship it by February 7 (if you’re shipping internationally, you might want to add an extra week or so). And don’t forget the Instagram hashtag #2018sve

4. Receive your Secret Valentine gift!

As always, I made some printable tags (the cute little doggy is inspired by Ute’s pet Maja). Feel free to download them here or click on the image above. I also added a version without “2018 Secret Valentine Exchange” for general purposes if you happen to like the design and want a handy little gift tag with some crafty animals! I highly recommend printing these on cardstock (in the example photo, I printed it on textured inkjet paper).

We can’t wait to see who signs up!! Are you in? Please feel free to contact me or Ute with any questions here in the comments section or at secret.valentine.exchange[at]gmail.com. We’ll also announce the exchange on instagram and you can find us there too (@ute_ig @sanaeishida). Hooray!!

P.S. SVE seems to be growing each year and with the increase in participants, Ute and I have found a corresponding increase in communication needs. We love SVE so much that we wanted to continue the tradition, but we both have pretty heavy workloads this year and realized that we won’t be able to comment on as many IG posts or get back to inquiries with the same rapid turnaround we’ve managed in the past. We will do our absolute best, but just wanted to give you a heads up. <3