I have had a couple of people ask me about letterboxing lately. I thought I would try to give a brief description about the hobby for those who are interested. I like to say that letterboxing is a sport that combines stamping and hiking. Intrigued?When you "letterbox," you follow a set of clues that will lead you to a hidden box somewhere in the world (mostly North America). Boxes can be easy to get to or they can involve a several mile hike. The good news is there are boxes hidden to accommodate every kind of ability.
When you locate a box, you will find a stamp (either store bought or hand carved) and a journal inside. You then stamp the box journal with a personal stamp you brought with you and stamp your own journal with the letterbox stamp. Does that make sense? I have a nice journal filled with stamped images I collected at various boxes.
The image above is my own personal stamp. I chose "leapfrog" because it is my initials. I carved the frog and lettering and decided afterward that I would never carve letters again. Boy are they hard!
Letterboxing got its start in England, but grew in popularity in America after an article was published in Smithsonian. Internet sites then appeared where people could list clues to find the letterboxes they hid. I recommend letterboxing.org and Atlas Quest to get started. Once you start researching letterbox locations, I think you will be surprised how many are located right in your backyard!
The second card I am posting is one I made for a Hero Arts challenge. The theme was "summer." I created a card that looked like letterboxing to me. Of course, then people asked, "what's letterboxing?"
To make the card, I stamped the tree three times and colored it with Copic markers. I then brushed green chalk over the marker so that the trees appeared fuller. I made sure to use the chalk AFTER my marker so that I wouldn't hurt my markers in any way.
5 comments:
Oh my gosh Laura... that sounds so intriguing. So much so, I looked at some of the links and then the Atlas site. There are five sites within just a few miles of me!!! How fun! I am going to read up a bit more and see if I can find them!! :-) See what you started!?!? It would be fun to take the kiddos with me!
Well, you learn something new every day! It is called geocaching here but I have never heard of it done with stamps - what fun!
We haven't been letterboxing in ages. Is there a whole new "generation" enjoying the quest? Lighthouse Lady
Penny, there is geocaching here as well! They are similar to each other, and yet slightly different. I don't have a gps to do geocaching, so I stick to the letterboxing.
Love this card! It is so cheerful and seems so fun and summery! Never heard of letterboxing before! I may have to check that out!
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