#letterboxing

[animate-mush]

You know, I am not much of an artist.

But dang if I can't draw backwards on rubber

Now I gotta carve this somehow

Who can guess what tune this is?

[conservethis]

While vacationing in England last week, I went to Dartmoor National Park, where I saw some tors on the moor.

And because I like to peer under things and into crevices, I happened to find 2 separate letterboxes left there by some local children.

I hadn’t ever heard of letterboxing before then, either! It’s sort of like geocaching, but with more rubber stamps.

Letterboxing (hobby) - Wikipedia

Letterboxing (hobby) - Wikipedia

[draconym]

Trick or treat!

You get: letterboxing stamps I've carved

[tree-whispering]

letterboxing views from today

[patheticprogrammingperson]

Shipping letterboxing and pillarboxing in order to create yuri so toxic it could kill a small animal or regular sized videophile.

[gerard-lange-art-journals]

Letterboxing took me and my family to Cape Cod. If you are an artist and like geocaching be sure to try letterboxing. Directions to hidden locations read more like a map to pirate treasure and instead of a logbook with a trinket, an inkpad with a custom rubber stamp awaits. Be sure to bring your own stamp to mark the logbook and your own ink just in case

Gerard Lange art journals, Book 15: Wanderlust, spread 17 (pp. 34–25), 2010–2011

[eldritchdropout]

So, one of my Many hobbies is letterboxing (geocaching but with homemade rubber stamps). I love going out to the nearby parks and finding people's art hidden away in stumps and under bridges - it's also a great way to get some much needed fresh air an exercise. (If you're interested I recommend going to atlasquest.com, they have all the info you could ever want there.)

However. I am an overachiever. And chronically online.

So I carved twelve stamps to make a walking loop. Why twelve? One for each month, of course!

Now, I've seen a holiday stamp series before. August: Clown Week! November: Thanksgiving! December: Christmas! But I thought hey. What if I made. Tumblr holidays instead?

THE HOLIDAY LIST:

January 8th: Spiders Georg Day February: (okay we don't have one of those yet, so I chose a weekly one instead) It Is Wednesday, My Dudes March 15th: The Ides of March April 13th: Neil Banging Out the Tunes Day May 3rd: Dracula Daily June 22nd: Summerween July 11th-13th: Dashcon August 21st: Goncharov (original post day) September 8th: The Queen is Dead October 3rd: It's October 3rd November 5th: Guy Fawkes-Putin-Destiel-Election Day December: (all month) Gavlebocken Arson

I've made the stamps and put them in their boxes, but I was wondering if anyone would want to see them before I hide them? Since 99.9% of the people here won't be able to in person? I can also link their Atlas Quest page when I'm done so y'all can see my Beautiful holiday descriptions lol.

[hotchkiss-and-tell]

I don’t think I ever shared my new Letterboxing hobby here. Basically you follow clues to where someone has hidden a rubber stamp, bringing a logbook and your trail stamp with you, and once you find the hidden stamp, you ink up and put it in your logbook as a way of collecting it, and use your trail stamp in the hiding spot’s logbook as a way of marking that you stopped by. You put everything back exactly as you found it before leaving.

One aspect is that you can add tiny “hitchhikers” to boxes, and if you find a hitchhiker, you’re allowed to take that stamp with you, as long as you’re willing to hide it in another box - preferably as far away as possible from where you found it - so the hitchhiker can travel big distances.

I ended up carving my own hitchhiker series and thought hobo codes were the perfect theme for stamps that are meant to travel far from their original hiding place. Stamps from my first batch (starting in the Midwest) have been logged online as found in Florida, Oregon, and Maine. This weekend, I made five more in the series. I think Josiah Crowley would be proud.