In my earliest days of letterboxing, we were just "The Loveday Family." We used a store bought stamp, probably from a Micheals Arts and Crafts Store. It was a cartoon frog that was skipping and leaping in the air with a huge smile on his face. I don't remember the exact story of how we selected this stamp, but I imagine it was more of a hand-me-down than a decision.
My mom, at the time, was teaching first and second grade (multiage) at Mantua Elementary School at Mantua ES in Fairfax, VA. Her classrooms theme was frogs, and EVERYTHING was frog themed. She has frog stickers for her students, frog stamps, frog number lines, frog books, even a frog themed Box Top holder. I believe this frog passion stemmed from the frogs we had in our aquarium. Anyway, this stamp was used on her students papers, so it was multi-purposed for letterboxes. We letterboxed rarely in these years, but the frog was the best symbol to symbolize our family in this time period. We used a lime green ink pad, and now all of my older, rather, original stamps are stamped in this lime green color.
When I got back into letterboxing in 2018, I was very much into photography. I still am, but at this time, I was taking dark room classes and was using processing film as a therapy for me. When I decided I was going to spend more time letterboxing, I found a wooden stamp at an AC Moore of a camera. I stamped it in teal, and it was my only ink pad. Honestly, I never even considered having multiple ink pads with different colors, so every stamp in my book from this period is stamped in teal.
When I initially found this stamp, I was only on LBNA. I made my trail name WhyNot41, because this had been my password for my High School email. "Why Not" came from me identifying myself as an optimist. In the movie, "We Bought a Zoo", the lead character, Benjamin Mee, portrayed by Matt Damon, is a pessimist. He buys a zoo and meets one of the zoo keepers, Kelly Foster, portrayed by Scarlett Johansson, who is an optimist. Throughout the movie, Benjamin is asking "Why?" to Kelly and every time she responds with "Why Not?" I always want to be someone who responds to questions in that manner. A glass half-full person. The number 41 came about because it was my Ice Hockey number, Color Guard number, and Quidditch number.
When I discovered Atlasquest, it was because a letterbox listed on LBNA was cross listed on Atlasquest and the logbook said so. It was very exciting finding a website with more of a community feel and a significantly better interface. Honestly, if I had never discovered Atlasquest, I wouldn't have kept letterboxing. One of my discoveries when joining Atlasquest, was all the cool trail names Letterboxers had. In my area, we had Paper Trail, CastleKeepers, Super Rod, Scarab, Night0wl, etc. just to name a few. The names seemed to be more straightforward and less high-school-email-password-like, so I boxed with it for a little while, then I changed it.
I decided on AdventurousAcorn because of something my Aunt said. In High School, she admired my sense of adventure and how I was up for anything. On one trip to Philadelphia with my Mom, Aunt, brother, and three cousins. I convinced the family to stay 2 extra days because my adventurous spirit was infectious. I knew I wanted to be Adventure-something, but was was the something going to be? I had no particular passion for Acorns, but upon a quick google search for things that start with the letter A (I was going for alliteration), I found that I liked Acorn, but Adventure wasn't going to work, so I became Adventurous Acorn.
I wanted something cute for a trail stamp, so I found an image on Pinterest of a happy acorn doodle. I carved it on the back of a giant mistake eraser, and changed my account name. I did this the day before my first letterboxing event, because I didn't want people to look at me and call out "Hey, WhyNot41!" so upon arrival, I was ready to go. It was a little funny though, because everyone had already printed out their checklists with WhyNot41 written on them, so not very many people knew they were looking for me. The morning of the event, I went to the craft store to buy a different ink pad. I didn't want to be a teal acorn, too illogical to me. I also didn't want to be brown because it's too boring, so I decided on a fall color, and bought a Color box inked labeled "Ruby". Before you ask, yes, I showed up to my first event with only one color inked. Thank goodness the host put mini ink pads in all the boxes.
I've been AdventurousAcorn ever since, but there has been two other versions of my trail stamp. I've always been a crafter and was very into LTC's for a long time. When I started creating quips, I needed a smaller stamp to fit on to the back, so I carved a tiny acorn with minimal detail resembling my main stamp. It's still in use. This stamp is only about a centimeter big, but fun fact: I have three different versions of my main stamp because I lose it so often, yet have never lost the red mini stamp.
The other stamp I have is a blue one. This one came about because I was making LTC's with red background paper and needed a different color stamp to pop on the red paper. I chose a blue one. The different image is because I had just gotten back from studying abroad and was working in my colleges Study Abroad office. This stamp is a bit smaller than my main stamp, and I use it mostly when encountering smaller logbooks, stamping in postals, or on red paper.
Honorary Mention:
My husband, then boyfriend, and I enjoyed walking, when I started getting into letterboxing, he came with me a bunch, so I though he needed his own trail name. Our nick names for each other is "Booberry" (because of an app called My Boo and the pet I had on the app was called berry) so he chose that. Of course, he doesn't really care about letterboxing or tracking it I should say, so I could probably delete the account and he would never notice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We pretty much only use his account for signing up for events. He has his own stamp though, that he doesn't really use, but I made it. It's two blue berries, one is him and one is me. We stamp this in purple, because purple is the most superior color.
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