What is a Blog Train?

In the digital scrap world, a Blog Train is when several designers get together and make a kit based on one color scheme and/or theme. Each designer creates their own choice of elements, papers, quick pages and templates. The only similarities from one designer to the next is the common colors and/or theme so that the kits can be used interchangeably. The pieces of the kit are offered for free at the blogs of the individual designers. Visitors must travel from blog to blog in order to obtain all the pieces of the kit.

How a Blog Train works
The organizer of the train collects the names and blog links of designers wishing to participate and provides any further information or rules for the train. There is a deadline for all designers to sign up for the train and a separate deadline for providing previews of their portion of the kit to the organizer.   The train organizer will collect all the links and create a list of all participants.  This list will be provided to the designer's prior to the "Departure Date."  When the Departure Date arrives, all participating designers post their previews and download links on their own blogs. There is usually a requirement for the designer to post either a list of all the blogs in the train or a home blog ("Station") address where a visitor can return for the rest of the links. On average, designers make download links to the freebies available for 30 days, but the time period can be as short as 7 days. After that it is up to each designer if they want to keep the freebie on their site or start it in a store for a fee. However, the length of time a freebie is available is dependent upon the blog train.

Some blog trains may have design constraints in addition to the theme and color. However, individual portions of the blog train are often unconstrained outside of the color and theme requirements. Individual designers may create their portions as:

• Commercial Use or Personal Use
• A single item or a complete mega kit
• Tagger Size (72 dpi) or Full Size Scrapping Kit (300 dpi)

Blog Train Parlance
TRAIN STATION: Blog for the train or the blog for the organizer of the train.  Contains all information about the blog train and all the links.
CONDUCTOR: Organizer of the blog train.
STOPS: Individual Designers' blogs.
TRAIN: The collective set of blogs.
TRAIN ROUTE AKA THE RIDE: The list of links leading from blog to blog.
CARGO: The free downloads made available at each blog.
JOURNEY: The theme for a particular train
PASSENGER AKA RIDER: Anyone follows the links from blog to blog to download the freebies.
DEPARTURE DATE:  The date the train leaves the station and all download links are made available on participating designer's blogs.