Letterboxing, Stamp Edition

Last year, I read about an activity called letterboxing. It is essentially a treasure hike! How it works is you have clues to find a box hidden somewhere, usually around trails and walking areas. In that box, you will find a book and a stamp. Once you find it, you stamp your book with the box's stamp, and stamp the box's book with your stamp. You also put the date so the owner will know when you were there. It sounds like lots of fun, and something the girls will love.

Part of the fun of letterboxing is to make your own personalized stamp. It can be as simple as a letter or as elaborate as you want. Everything I've read about it says that a homemade stamp is the best. So, I went to Michael's eons ago and found the Speedball set complete with tools, a guide, tracing paper, and the pad to carve. It sat forever while winter blew on and procrastinator Michelle didn't touch it. Well, I finally got out the supplies last night and made our stamp:

First I decided on a design. I wanted something that had our name or our initials in it. I tried to find a dog bone, but there was not one I liked. So I used the house. After I printed it, I put it face down on the stamp block, about 1/4 of an inch from the side. I held on to it tight and rubbed the fire out of it! When I was done, the ink had transferred to the stamp block.


Then I began to carve. It took me a minute to figure out how I wanted it to look--just like my print, or the opposite. I wanted it to look just like my pattern, but that was way too difficult! I messed one up figuring this part out. Lucky for me the stamp block was a decent size! I started over again and had a good idea exactly how to do it this time. I decided to just carve out the "L" and the initials and let the rest be colored.


From there I tested it out. Not bad for my first go at it! I went back with my tools and did some trimming and detailing to make it look alright. It was surprisingly easy. I thought it would be much harder than it was. Now we have a stamp to use to go letterboxing! I think we are planning to go next week, and I will tell you all about it!