Letterboxing with AdventurousAcorn

It's really easy to carve an image from clip art or a drawing, but what about my personal photos. I've carved three images from pictures I've taken/someone has taken for me. These images end up being the most personal images that I have. All you need for this project is the Adobe Capture App and a photo you want to carve. Below is the process I used for carving an image of my mom's dog, Bruno, for the 2021 Carve December prompt, "Playful". 1. Select the photo you want to carve. The best photos for carving have a slightly higher contract and if you were to make the photo black and white, you wouldn't lose any of the information in the photo. This photo of Bruno could have been better! He's a similar color to the floor, so the app couldn't always differentiate him from the carpet. I ended up correcting this by carving a positive image and not giving him a body outline. 2. Open the Adobe Capture App and go to libraries. From there click the bubble in ...

This past weekend, I attended the ...AND!... event hosted by Tree Knocker and Paper Trail. The weather was perfect, which was a pleasant surprise for a November event, and it was so peaceful walking around listening to the leaves falling. I walked with PiggyJaunt, and it was great to catch up and chat. The stamps all had one thing in common, the letters A, N, and D were in the word consecutively. The stamps were carved at such a high-quality level, and everything was clear and clever. I think my favorite stamps of the event were "Propag and a" "Yankee Doodle D and y" or "C and y Shop." The Propaganda stamps featured one of Doctor Suess's Propaganda posters with Hitler on it. The wording was carved so perfectly! The Yankee Doodle Candy was an original image (I believe) of a patriot holding a flag. The Candy Shop was an incredibly detailed image of a candy store. I was highly impressed with the detail of how they carved the candy so small yet clearly. I...

  My mom is a second-grade teacher in the Stafford County Public School System. She loves teaching, even though parents and some kids can be difficult. I've made her a stamp before with a Monarch butterfly that read "Loveday" above it. That used to be her last name, but last year, she remarried, and her last name changed to "Bowles." She uses the stamps for her classroom books, and to mark items in her class as hers. It prevents confusion, especially at the end of the school year when she has to pack. She requested I make her a new Bowles stamp a few weeks ago, and I'm ready to share the final result! Though she only requested one, I decided to deliver two. The first, of course, is the Monarch butterfly. This image is different, however from the previous one because the name is displayed in the middle of the butterfly and not the top. It's much more elegant compared to the previous one (which was my first time seriously attempting lettering, by the way.)...

I've recently started my fifth logbook! and it means it's time to make the next logbook so that it is available when I need it. My current logbook is a resin, color-shift dragon eye cover book that I made myself using mold, resin, and mica powder. I bound the pages together using a Coptic stitch and green waxed thread. I'm going to be using the same stitch on a Flamingo Party Logbook that I'll be making but will be making a different style cover than I had used for the Dragon Eye Logbook. For this project I will be using the following materials: 65lb Cardstock Paper (doesn't have to be white);  for the signatures Waxed Cotton Round Cord for Bookbinding; for the Coptic stitch Bone Folding Tool, optional; can make folding the papers easier Decorative Paper at least 7x10 and Flexible Enough to Fold Cooperatively; for the cover ThunderBolt 5.5 x 8.5-inch Chip Board;  To make the cover sturdy  Single Piece of Decorative Paper, optional; for the book spine decoration Tack...

My husband and I consider letterboxing "our thing" so when we decided to go to the Smokey Mountains this past weekend, we committed ourselves to spend one day of our trip letterboxing. When looking for letterboxes in the area about a month ago, when we were planning our trip, it was pure coincidence that a letterboxing event was being held just 30 minutes away from where we were staying! We (in particular me) were excited about the opportunity to meet some new people that don't live in our area. We are very fortunate to live where we live and to have the letterboxers, our friends, that live near us. Going to events is my favorite part of the hobby, and if I hadn't discovered events, I probably wouldn't have kept letterboxing. Going to events makes letterboxing feel more like a community. The opportunity to meet more people sounded great to me! The event was also a great opportunity to bring some old stamps out of the box to share with new boxers! I brought two o...

  .... Well, I guess technically it was, but let me explain. Geocaching.com is a larger and commonly recognized community by public standards. It's platform is not intended to be secretive and if you've ever met a geocacher, you know that they live and breath their hobby. Don't get me wrong, I've yet to meet a letterboxes that was the same way, but the geocachers are their own animal. Before I even knew about letterboxing, I was geocaching with my mom and dad. The first Geocache I found was with my dad in the mountains of Utah in 2005, I believe. My dad is a geologist and has a knack for adventure, so he when he first heard about geocaching, her was quick to find geocache and we were in the jeep driving to it. I was so young that I don't really remember that many details about the process of getting there. I do, however, remember finding the box. It was an old ammo container hiding under a log and there were trinkets in it-- not geotrash as is commonly found now. I ...

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....

When I got into letterboxing, it was the spring of my freshman year of college, and I was majoring in American Public History and was considering minoring in recreational management. I had big dreams of becoming a historical park ranger at Independence Hall National Park. at that time, I was considering a minor in Recreational Management and decided to take an elective class on Recreation and Leisure. This class was anything but leisurely.  The most ironic part of this class was reading textbooks on leisure instead of experiencing it. It did however have the easiest final that I ever took. We had to try a new leisurely activity and present it to the class. My cohorts were very excited when I decided to practice cake decorating (something that I wasn't good at all. I guess we all start somewhere) and brought in a remanence of a cake with red and green decorations because I was reusing leftover supplies from Christmas. For this class, we had to do something leisurely for an hour and ...