Planting & Boxing

Resting while mom takes notes.

Today we went out and planted our Monster High boxes.  It is supposed to storm on Halloween so we planted them today and will list them on Thursday.  A few times this year we drove past an area while letterboxing that caught my attention and I wanted to check it out.  It is a little nature preserve with a small loop trail.  We had a nice time walking and planting our boxes and hope that the finders enjoy it too.

We have already boxed in this area and thought that we had found/attempted everything.  But then I discovered that there were some old boxes on LbNA that we had missed.  Both of the boxes that we looked for were planted in 2007.

St Joseph Church in Jasper,

The first one we found was in St Henry.  The stamp was great but the box was in horrible shape.  It was a pouch and it had bugs, water, and mud in it.  We replaced everything but the stamp.  When we got home I discovered that it has been retired on AQ but it is there :)

The other box that we found was planted at St Joseph Catholic Church in Jasper.  The church and grounds were beautiful.  The box was very easy to find.  We actually think it was in the wrong spot because it was a little to easy to find.  This box had recently been updated and we were the second people to stamp in the new logbook.  The kids enjoyed running around while I stamped and they lost one of our old store bought signature stamps.  All in all it was a nice day.

First Finders!

Today we looked for 2 letterboxes and we were "First Finders" for both :)  Woo Hoo!  We went to Posey County, which is west of us, and Warrick County, which is east of us.

We started off at Harmonie State Park in Posey County.  Someone came over last fall for our event and planted a box while she was here.  For some reason she never posted the clue.  She recently posted on the Indiana board to see if anyone would be interested in going after it.  I wanted to get out and needed to go to Harmonie anyway so she sent me her notes.

The princess with our first box of the day. 

All we had were her rough notes but were able to find it.  The stamp was really cool and my daughter liked the logbook.  It was an exciting adventure.

When you plant a box in a state park in Indiana you are supposed to fill out a Geocaching permit.  It was time to renew my permits so I went and checked on 3 of my boxes while we were there.  Sadly one of them was missing.  I think I will retire and not recarve.

After that we stopped and got some lunch at the DQ in Mt Vernon and headed to Newburgh in Warrick County.

Princess and Lil Ewok at the second box. 

This box was also planted by someone out of town and in an area now full of letterboxes.  But we were happy to get it and be first finders.  The image was a cannon but the baby kept saying that it was a "Choo choo."  He has a birthday coming up and I think we will plant a "choo choo" box for him.  Glad we got these boxes before it gets to cold.

2013 Fall Event

Evansville Area Meet & Greet 

We just had our 2013 fall event!  A few months ago I tried to get a hold of the ladies who helped with our big event last year.  I wasn't able to contact them and I thought that I would not be able to hold a big event on my own.  So we went to a small restaurant event in Nashville a few months ago and I decided that I would have an event like that.

We had 7 people (including me) show up at the Golden Corral to exchange, pass around table tops, eat, and fellowship.  I had met everyone but 2 of the people but it is nice to get together with people who understand the hobby.

One of the other boxers talked about putting on an event in the spring and I am looking forward to that.  And another said that they had two big series in the works for next year.  That was exciting news too :)  Now I want to have a big event next fall and the ideas are already flowing.

Autumn Awe LTCs

This is my second year to participate in the "Autumn Awe" LTC tracker.  This time I used alcohol inks and salt for the paper that the stamp was stamped on.  I used fall colors and carved a stamp of falling leaves.

Autumn Awe: Falling Leaves

I am not very creative when it comes to embeshishing cards but I wanted to add something extra to it.  That is where the ribbon comes in.  I know it is not real fancy but it is outside the box for me.  I haven't gotten my cards back so I am looking forward to seeing what others made.

Autumn Awe: The Perfect Pumpkin

The card I made last year is "The Perfect Pumpkin".  This was the third LTC tracker that I signed up for.  At first, the stamp was all one piece and I had to color the different parts.  I decided I didn't like it so I re-carved it and made all the pieces separate.  The pumpkin, stem, vine, and leaf are all separate stamps.

For the swirly vines background, I used a store bought stamp and covered the part where the pumpkin would go.  On some of the cards the vines were green and others they were gold.  I think I did pretty good for a newbie.

Bring on the Brads

Fall Friend 

This is my card for the "Bring on the Brads" LTC swap.  As soon as I saw the tracker I knew that I wanted to make a fall card.  I am also in the "Autumn Awe" tracker and I saw some pretty fall leaf brads when I was working on that card.

The stamp for this card is recycled from a series that I planted at my event last fall.  They were on the trail at a state park from Sept to Dec and now they are sitting in a drawer.  It was nice to dust him off and reuse him.  I am really looking forward to seeing what other people made.

My First Geocaching Event

Cachers talking

I went to my first geocaching event today. Around here the only people who plant hybrid boxes are geocachers. And for the most part they only put the clues on the geocaching web site. I have a Girl Scout friend who is an active cacher and I was asking about this one day. She said that we should have a Geocacher/Letterboxer event to talk about this kind of stuff.

Looking at my LTC binder

So today at one of the local libraries we had the event. I talked about letterboxing and listing clues on our web sites. If they are going to take the time to plant a cache with a stamp why not put clues to the box where people who look for stamps can find them?

I also took carving tools and told people if they were interested in making a stamp to bring a school eraser. Most of the geocachers brought erasers. I took some extras and I believe everyone made a stamp.

Carving stamps 

I have never been to a geocaching event before so I didn't know what they do to pass the time. I took two of my table tops and they seemed to enjoy those. I also took one of my binders of LTCs to show off different stamps. I think they all liked that too. I wish I could have gotten some other letterboxers to attend but our numbers are really low right now :(

Monster High & Crappy Pink

Daddy's Favorite Princess and I are participating in the "Monster High" LTC tracker.  The due date was a few days ago so maybe we will get them back by the end of next week.

This was the princesses fourth stamp and her first positive carve.  I think I didn't explain what I wanted her to do very well because she just scratched the surface of the parts she was supposed to carve away.  Or maybe I should have given her a bigger gauge.  Anyway, I ended up doing a lot of "clean up" on her stamp.

As for my stamp, we finally got a stab of the crappy 2012 pink.  It is extremely soft and just rubbing your hand across it will bring off bits of material.  I had heard a lot of people complaining about the new pink on the AQ boards so I knew it was just a matter of time before we got some.

One of the things that really surprised me about the bad material was that it didn't ink well.  I had planed on embossing my card but it wouldn't take the ink.  I inked the stamp with an embossing pad, stamped it on cardstock, and dumped the embossing powder on.  But the powder wouldn't stick to the paper.  I thought that maybe my ink pad was drying out so I tried it again with a black ink pad.  It still wouldn't work.  So, I didn't emboss the card after all.

On a positive note, this week we found 2 slabs of 09 pink and it should hold us over for a while :)

We will be planting our Monster High stamps for Halloween.  Just looking for a good place to put them.  I have an idea, I just need to find some time to check it out.