Making signature swag

[albie1996]

I've just finished making my own signature swag, which are these keychains. The globe is made of polymer clay and the tag on it with my username is made of the shrinking plastic. All in all, it was fairly cheap to make and easy (for me). I'll only be putting these in caches that I particularly like, and am planning on doing personalised coins for the rest.

 

Anyway, what's everyone else's process for signature swag? What time of time and effort do you put into making it? I'm just tired of seeing nothing but junk being left in caches and want to leave something special for someone else. 

[+BigBlueDot]

That’s so nice! I’m not talented but I agree with you- I love the personal touch of hand made items. They are my favorite 

[+niraD]

On 6/24/2018 at 3:30 PM, albie1996 said:

Anyway, what's everyone else's process for signature swag?

I use canework techniques with polymer clay to make my signature tokens. It takes several hours to make a batch, but I usually get a few hundred tokens out of it.

[albie1996]

22 hours ago, niraD said:

I use canework techniques with polymer clay to make my signature tokens. It takes several hours to make a batch, but I usually get a few hundred tokens out of it.

Wow! They're really cute. I'd be really happy to find that out in a cache somewhere

[albie1996]

23 hours ago, BigBlueDot said:

That’s so nice! I’m not talented but I agree with you- I love the personal touch of hand made items. They are my favorite 

I find them way better than rubbish or mouldy business cards

[+BigBlueDot]

So true! Lol

[SEWdaugh]

When we started we made sewing kits as our signature item. We also did laminated cards with thimble charms attached, and my daughter made polymer minecraft items attaced to her card. We still have the collection of sig items we collected from others, even though we rarely geocache now.

A few years in to geocaching we had trackable pins made to leave in special caches, but the homemade signature items were always my favorite. 

[albie1996]

8 hours ago, SEWdaugh said:

When we started we made sewing kits as our signature item. We also did laminated cards with thimble charms attached, and my daughter made polymer minecraft items attaced to her card. We still have the collection of sig items we collected from others, even though we rarely geocache now.

A few years in to geocaching we had trackable pins made to leave in special caches, but the homemade signature items were always my favorite. 

They're really cute. I am a sewer (and knitter and crocheter, and I've dabbled in quilting) so I would have loved to have found a little sewing kit

[+Jayeffel]

terms I've never heard- "polymer clay", "canework technique", "polymer minecraft"  , guess I'm getting old.

[albie1996]

8 hours ago, Jayeffel said:

terms I've never heard- "polymer clay", "canework technique", "polymer minecraft"  , guess I'm getting old.

I don't know about the other two, but polymer clay is pretty much just a clay that you cure in the oven. And it's made from plastic compounds rather an a proper mud clay. It ends up being very strong, water resistant, and long lasting. And they come in heaps of colours

[+Jayeffel]

thanks

[+niraD]

9 hours ago, albie1996 said:

18 hours ago, Jayeffel said:

terms I've never heard- "polymer clay", "canework technique", "polymer minecraft"  , guess I'm getting old.

I don't know about the other two, but polymer clay is pretty much just a clay that you cure in the oven. And it's made from plastic compounds rather an a proper mud clay. It ends up being very strong, water resistant, and long lasting. And they come in heaps of colours

And canework is essentially a way to build a "cane" of a soft material that has a cross section that displays the image you want. Once you build the cane (mine are a few inches in diameter), you can then reduce the diameter of the cane in a way that preserves the image while making it smaller. Then the cane can be sliced, revealing the cross section and its image. Long before polymer clay was developed, the technique was traditionally used with decorative glass and with hard candy.

[+Jayeffel]

Thanks, not my forte I guess.