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Sig Items - what worked, what didn't


Opalblade

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I was poking around in Michaels today and picked up some paint pens, shrinky dinks paper, wooden hearts (for caches I loved - a bit cheesy but I was in a hurry), and metal medallions with sayings on them.

 

Was curious what types of sig items people have toyed with before settling on whatever they are doing now :tongue:

 

Also, do you include any kind of note with your sig item? Like info about yourself, or a request to email you with where they found it, etc?

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shrinky dinks work great! they show that you spent some time making them, and you can design them however you want! I think a shrinky dink sig item would be cool. Maybe even buy a TB tag and use the code on all your shrinky dink designs for people to log when they find one :tongue:

 

Just an idea

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I leave hand made beaded spiders in each cache big enough to fit them. It's fun to see them mentioned in a user's log!

 

Ooo I'd love to find something like that :tongue:

 

I have a lot of thick wire and beads I never use so I'd considered doing something like that, but could'nt figure out how to incorporate my name other than an o or maybe an opal if I was getting really fancy :( I have in the past played around with "writing" words using wire and gluing them down onto something else. It looks really neat.

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When I first started geocaching I found a store that sold those tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce by the case. I used these as a signature item, and I justified it by figuring that it was more of a repellent than an attraction to animals.

 

Then I recall getting annoyed when I found a pack of gum in one of my caches and thought to myself "what part of NO FOOD IN CACHES are you not getting?". So I stopped using them in caches and kept them in my desk at work for my daily soup.

 

The funny thing is that 5-6 years later I was still seeing these in area caches and I wondered if they were just my old bottles recycled by other local cachers

 

Now my only signature item is my signature.

Edited by briansnat
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Mine have always been polymer clay (e.g., Fimo, Sculpey) tokens. The first few batches I made were stamped, kinda like plastic coins. Those were made from random bits of polymer clay that I had left over from other projects.

 

My last couple batches have been canework. The next one (which I'll start soon) will be canework too. I build the design as the cross section of the cane, then stretch the cane and slice it into tokens.

 

I use a Sharpie to write the GCxxxxx number of the cache on the token, and that GCxxxxx number is used to track the token at nirad.sigitem.com. Each token goes into a little ziplock bag with a note that explains what the token is and how to track it.

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I've been making signature items that combine shrink plastic and polymer clay. See my profile page for a picture of them. I haven't gotten any comments one way or another about them, but I enjoy finding handmade signature items in caches and hope that others feel likewise.

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check out this thread. there are lots of pictures of cool sig items - especially on the later pages.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...signature+items

 

RedShoesGirl, if you don't mind sharing, what is your technique and materials used for the flat marble sig items? They're gorgeous! :unsure:

 

i borrowed the technique from BRDad's — "directions are posted on the GeocachingMaine. org web site ~ here it is "The flat marbles themselves are the type sold at craft stores, I use the largest size, 1.25" - 1.5". Then I print out the pictures on photo paper, cut the pic to the shape of the marbles, and glue on with clear epoxy. I have made some with E6000 craft glue with decent results, too. You have to use a little extra glue so it is sure to fill all the voids on the back side of the marble. Then I just coat all exposed paper in more epoxy, and stick a magnet on the back."

 

i buy imperfect ones at the dollar store - much cheaper than michaels. instead of coating the back with more epoxy, which is a major pain and a major mess, i turn the whole bunch upside down on a paper plate. put them in a well-ventilated place and spray a fixative on the backs. to make them look even nicer, after the backs are really dry, i spray them with enamel paint. easy to do a bunch at a time. the glue on those earth metal magnets. cheap on ebay when you buy a bunch. i still have some of them stuck on metal things in the living room. if they are too big, it is impossible to get the magnet off whatever it is stuck on. the whole paint job will come undone. too small and they look weird. not sure what size i had. check office max or michaels to see what size works best.

 

i put them in a little plastic bag with a sticker on the outside that says, congratulations, you have found a signature from RedShoeGirl.

 

glad you like them.

 

rsg

Edited by RedShoesGirl
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Thank you! I am definitely going to try that sometime :lol:

 

check out this thread. there are lots of pictures of cool sig items - especially on the later pages.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...signature+items

 

RedShoesGirl, if you don't mind sharing, what is your technique and materials used for the flat marble sig items? They're gorgeous! :o

 

i borrowed the technique from BRDad's — "directions are posted on the GeocachingMaine. org web site ~ here it is "The flat marbles themselves are the type sold at craft stores, I use the largest size, 1.25" - 1.5". Then I print out the pictures on photo paper, cut the pic to the shape of the marbles, and glue on with clear epoxy. I have made some with E6000 craft glue with decent results, too. You have to use a little extra glue so it is sure to fill all the voids on the back side of the marble. Then I just coat all exposed paper in more epoxy, and stick a magnet on the back."

 

i buy imperfect ones at the dollar store - much cheaper than michaels. instead of coating the back with more epoxy, which is a major pain and a major mess, i turn the whole bunch upside down on a paper plate. put them in a well-ventilated place and spray a fixative on the backs. to make them look even nicer, after the backs are really dry, i spray them with enamel paint. easy to do a bunch at a time. the glue on those earth metal magnets. cheap on ebay when you buy a bunch. i still have some of them stuck on metal things in the living room. if they are too big, it is impossible to get the magnet off whatever it is stuck on. the whole paint job will come undone. too small and they look weird. not sure what size i had. check office max or michaels to see what size works best.

 

i put them in a little plastic bag with a sticker on the outside that says, congratulations, you have found a signature from RedShoeGirl.

 

glad you like them.

 

rsg

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check out this thread. there are lots of pictures of cool sig items - especially on the later pages.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...signature+items

 

RedShoesGirl, if you don't mind sharing, what is your technique and materials used for the flat marble sig items? They're gorgeous! :)

Yes they are...she's making a few for me as a recent trade!! I'm excited!!

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I was poking around in Michaels today and picked up some paint pens, shrinky dinks paper, wooden hearts (for caches I loved - a bit cheesy but I was in a hurry), and metal medallions with sayings on them.

 

Was curious what types of sig items people have toyed with before settling on whatever they are doing now :)

 

Also, do you include any kind of note with your sig item? Like info about yourself, or a request to email you with where they found it, etc?

Whatever sigitem you choose to make, placing it in a little Baggie before dropping it will go a long way to keep it in pristine condition until they are grabbed!!

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I definitely want to pick up some baggies, great tip :laughing:

 

Tried the dremel engraving on metal thing today. I definitely don't have the patience required. I am even more in awe of aniyn's sig items now :laughing: I ordered one of those metal stamp sets so will be using that for now - no freehand for me.

 

Reminds me of career week back in high school. At the time I wanted to be a paleontologist so I got placed at The South African Museum in Cape Town (where my family was living at the time) with a bio-geologist to oversee me. He told me the true test of whether I was well suited to paleontology would be if I could carefully unearth a dinosaur skeleton (one of those little chicken ones) out of the stone it was encased in and enjoy it. He handed me a dentist drill and walked away. By the third day that chicken dinosaur skeleton looked like the surface of the moon and I knew I was going to be going in a different career direction :)

 

PS. The poor bio-geologist tried his best to hide his horror on that third day, and then set me loose on his colleagues for the rest of the time - I wandered around the museum and random people showed me what they were working on and neat things they'd found out in the field.

Edited by Opalblade
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check out this thread. there are lots of pictures of cool sig items - especially on the later pages.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...signature+items

 

RedShoesGirl, if you don't mind sharing, what is your technique and materials used for the flat marble sig items? They're gorgeous! :laughing:

Yes they are...she's making a few for me as a recent trade!! I'm excited!!

 

just waiting for the glue to dry on the magnet before i put them in little baggies. can't have the baggie stuck to the flat marble.

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I'm in the machine embroidery business...Do you think that like, a small round patch with a custom design by me in a coin holder (or at least a baggie) would make a good sig item? It'd be neat to have something that's directly linked to my livelihood. :huh:

 

YES!!

 

I was afraid it may be a bad idea, considering that if a patch did get wet it could mold or at least develop a nasty stain. ;)

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I'm in the machine embroidery business...Do you think that like, a small round patch with a custom design by me in a coin holder (or at least a baggie) would make a good sig item? It'd be neat to have something that's directly linked to my livelihood. :huh:

 

YES!!

 

I was afraid it may be a bad idea, considering that if a patch did get wet it could mold or at least develop a nasty stain. ;)

 

It's a good idea. If you put it in a plastic baggie then it will help keep it from getting wet. Besides, I doubt they would be in a cache for very long.

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I'm in the machine embroidery business...Do you think that like, a small round patch with a custom design by me in a coin holder (or at least a baggie) would make a good sig item? It'd be neat to have something that's directly linked to my livelihood. ;)

 

*wipes drool from mouth* YES, that would be awesome! There is a multi stage cache here in Texas that's a 10 mile hike but the "prizes" are customized patches saying you completed the find. Very cool.

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Great. :P Well, now I gotta design one. I have no idea what to put on it. :) If I put a website I can't like, put my own, right? Because that would be advertising. So if I make them trackable I can use sigitem.com, right?

 

You can put anything you want on your sig item but when I see anything with a website on it, I call it advertising and skip it.

We have someone around here that leaves engraved plastic tokens that is their sig item but it also lists their business. I haven't taken one and I've found at least 10 of them.

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Great. :P Well, now I gotta design one. I have no idea what to put on it. :) If I put a website I can't like, put my own, right? Because that would be advertising. So if I make them trackable I can use sigitem.com, right?

If you spend a little time looking around in the Geocoin forims, you might get a lot of good design ideas. There's nothing wrong with putting your website on them, but if it's a business, that might make it a little less appealing

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