And another thing...

I recently went to a work event and as a gift from the company organizing it, they gave a nice Starfrit salad lunch kit thing to everyone. Upon taking my seat and seeing this, I exclaimed, "Wow, this is perfect - I need something like this to take lunch to work." to which my companion replied, "But don't you have that huge stack of Tupperware at your house?"

Slow blink. She meant all my Lock 'n Locks.

"Yes." Quick change of topic.

This wasn't the stack she was talking about.  This is today's new addition to the stack.

Yet another letterboxing adventure in Guelph

Burns Conservation Area boardwalk

Finally, I had a chance to get out and do some actual letterboxing of my very own.  All I had to do was take a day off mid-week to do it.  Vacation days well spent, I say.

In terms of proximity and number of boxes, Guelph is still my go-to place as there are so many boxes available.  I suppose in time, I'll catch up and have to venture further out into pure Kitchener/Waterloo area.

Anyways, I got up last Tuesday, clues in hand, music for my car, and bopped away on the 407, Guelph-bound to go look for Fiddleheads' new box Fey Folk of the Forest.  The forest was gorgeous in the morning, and the walk was beautiful and refreshing.  I don't want to say too much about this box for other letterboxer's sakes, but if you are able, you should definitely make your way out to Burns Conservation Area to see the great things that our Fiddleheads has been up to.  Definitely worth the trip!

The final resting place of John Arkell

Next, I drove right into Guelph to visit Farnham Cemetery where Lone R's box was waiting.  The interesting thing about this one is that it is essentially across the street from the Arkell Research Station where I spent a good amount of time during my undergrad.  That's where I learned to inseminate turkeys.  True story.

Anyways, in this tranquil cemetery lies the final resting place of Arkell family members for whom the Arkell Research Station was named.  It was beautiful and calm... And all I could think of was harassing birds.  Moving on.

I decided to take another crack at Gee Bee Z, which I had gone to before but decided against given the huge "DO NOT ENTER" signs.  This time, I pushed on, and found the letterbox exactly where the clue indicated it was.  Except, the tree where it was placed had started to eat the thing, so I had to use all my upper body strength to extract it from the tree's hold. Another great Kirbert plane carve to add to my collection.

Guelph Arboretum map

Next, I was off to the Guelph Arboretum, one of my favourite places to visit, to find a letterbox by a new pair of letterboxers, Calvin and Mira.  The Gryphon Dynasty letterbox took me on a fantastic stroll through the arboretum to a well made letterbox.  I hope to see more boxes by Calvin and Mira!

While at the University, I headed back to the McLaughlin Library to hunt down Lone R's OPAL 2012 boxes - Winter Woodcut in the Library and Coffee in the Library.  These started with the solving of two virtuals - my first - and led to a satisfying conclusion.  The campus and library look so similar to what I remember, despite all the new construction and renovations, so I was feeling awfully nostalgic while wandering the campus.

Just up Gordon Street, I found the parkette containing Earth Diver and Arabesque's School series. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the Goldfish due to some construction work and muggles hanging around, but was successful finding the Betta.  I suspect I'll be back for the Goldfish at some point!

Osprey nest

To make my feeling of nostalgia complete, I next headed further uptown to find Osprey.  In my final year of university at Guelph, I wrote a policy background paper on osprey.  I love these raptors so I was delighted to head up to this empty park to see a beautiful example of an osprey nest and stamp in while mother osprey stared at me coolly.

Whooooo are you looking for?

I headed back down to the centre of town to visit my old branch of the library to find Be the Dove of My Heart.  Fantastic clue and find... I may have harassed the wrong person for this box first.  Serves me right for not reading the clues correctly.  Another fantastic carve by Fiddleheads!

While visiting this library, I happened upon an interesting piece of art full of owls.  Three owls, looks like it was either a large woodcut or linocut.  Made me smile either way.

Next, I headed out to St. Joseph's Cemetery for another of Lone R's cemetery boxes.  Although just as fantastic as the others, this one was slightly sullied by the fact that I watched some strange guy walk into the cemetery, and, obviously not seeing me, continued to walk up to a bush not 10 metres away from me and start peeing.  Very classy.

Blair's Sheaves Tower

Fortunately, this was made up for during my trek out to another of her boxes, Trees. While the letterbox and its carve were fantastic, the experience was made supreme when I came across the path of two new letterboxers, mmmtika and sillychick.  Both were great ladies and I hope we can meet up for a longer visit sometime - and both are becoming prolific planters as I see from my AtlasQuest notices.  If you see this, keep up the great work ladies!

Next, I knocked off another box that I had attempted many moons ago - Harold and the Purple Crayon.  Exactly where it was supposed to be.  Delightful.

I finished off with another box that I had attempted recently - Lone R's Blair's Sheaves Tower. Also exactly where it was supposed to be.  This one is also a lesson in how different areas can look from early spring to mid-summer.  The place was so green and lush - if it weren't for the red mill, I wouldn't have even recognized it as the same place.

Finally, I got started with my own letterboxing this summer... Looking forward to more!

Under the bridge at Blair's Sheaves Tower

Letterbox history

Spoiler: I finally climbed my Everest

This is it.  It is done.  The event stamp is done.  My ridiculous idea to carve the Flammarion Engraving is finally done.  Probably sunk in the neighbourhood of 30 hours into this sucker - starting way back in March.  A little here, a little there... and it's finally done.

Here it is in all its glory.  This is just a picture of the stamp itself.  I've seen the registration it makes, and I love it.  If you want to see it too, all you have to do is show up at BoxON! 2012.

Now off to carve some of the event series stamps... Happy trails!

Spoiler: a little more progress

But that last background bit is going to take a whole lot longer than I thought. Huh.

Spoiler: More event stamp carving...

Just a quick update on the event carving that I've been diligently working on (lies, all lies).

It's taking a heck of a lot of time - I would estimate that I've put over 15 hours into this so far.  But I'm making epic progress, I have completed everything under the dome/atmosphere, and everything outside is somewhat easier. I figure two more hours into this and I'll be done... Glory day.

How to annoy local letterboxers *or* Why I'm loving this soft linoleum...

Okay, as a follow up to the last post, an update on a real carve of the new soft grey linoleum I picked up at DeSerres last week.  I've been contemplating the best ways to annoy local letterboxers, and I figure changing up my signature stamp again would be most effective.  I've been contemplating a new carve, which is both an image and letters, and I thought this would be perfect to really test the new material.

It looks shiny because the xylene was still damp.  But you can see the flawless transfer.

First off, my worries about being able to transfers onto this material given its dark colour are completely unfounded and I am more than happy with the results of my standard xylene transfer.

As you can see, the xylene actually produced a flawless creamy transfer onto the medium.  It looks white in the image to the right because it was still a little wet and reflected the light off of it.

Although the image was in black and the material is dark grey, the transfer was so good that it made no difference to me compared to transfers onto white material while carving under my magnifying light.

Here with a different angle to avoid the light glare, you can see that the transfer actually looks like I took a sharpie to it (I did not).  The image is clear and easily carvable.

You can see the lighter grey in the carved out portions here.

Next, the carving itself was really easy.  The material is really quite soft - more so than any other materials I currently use (pink stuff, Firm Cut, MZ, NZ).  As you carve, the carved out hollows actually look slightly lighter grey.  The material actually handles a bit differently - not better or worse, just different - and I think would take some getting used to. Carving the letters with the knife was a breeze, so was carving the image with gouges.

The hard part was physically holding the material because it is so thin (I hold my carvings in my left hand while carving with my right, rather than leaving the material flat on the table while I carve).  My happy solution was to tape it to a piece of acrylic which worked great.

Here are the completed and stamped images from my new signature stamp.  At the top is the impression using traditional dye ink, below is from pigment. 

I'm not sure how well this material would do with a highly detailed image.  Something makes me think that the material would not lend itself to them, particularly over a letterbox's lifespan.  But I'm talking about the REALLY highly detailed images.

Because the material is so soft, carving is a pleasure as the tools zip through the material without any force.  In fact, I could fault this stuff by saying the tools move through it too easily, but I suspect that is more from all the carving I've been doing on Firm Cut lately.

All in all, very, very happy with this material and I will be definitely buying up a whole ton of this stuff next time I'm out Oakville way.

Testing out new material: soft linoleum

Greetings everyone! Hope you are having a fantastic Victoria Day long weekend, full of letterboxing goodness!

Thin soft grey linoleum on the left, largest size of Speedy Carve on the right.

I've been doing some excellent letterboxing myself, which I will likely recount here later, but I just wanted to check in and tell you how happy I am with a new carving material I tried out recently.

The short story is this: all in all, I would definitely use it again.  It carves really, really well with both knife and gouge.  The stamping registrations are the best of any material I've used, by FAR, and the price certainly can't be beat.
 
There are some definite downsides with this stuff - I think the dark colour will make xylene transfers hard, if not impossible, for detailed carves, and the stuff has to be mounted - it is far too thin to be just put in a box by itself.

I have no idea what it is really called, but it is a dark grey, thin, flexible, linoleum that I bought at DeSerres for super cheap ($7 with no coupon for a size comparable to the $30 sized pink stuff from Michael's).

Anyways, see the pictures below for my comments.  I'm going to try with some transfers - I'm wondering whether my colour laser printer that transfers nicely might not work if I print in yellow rather than black... stay tuned!

Trying to free hand draw - you can see how thin this stuff is and how hard it is to see the pencil lines.

I went over my drawing with black Sharpie - much easier to see.  Carving with the gouge was an absolute pleasure.

You can see how thin it is here - I could actually cut the material with a standard pair of scissors.

Cut out and outlined - probably less than 30 seconds after I started.

Done carving - just have to cut the image out to get rid of the background.  I did this with a hobby knife, was super easy.

Mounted it up just like I would any other stamp.

Show time: absolute flawless registration.  I literally gasped when I saw it: the stamp registration dark areas are completely coloured in when using ColorBox pigment ink, hardly having to press at all. The areas in the lower left are lighter only because of the shine from the wet ink - the whole dark area was inked really nicely.

Spoiler: ten thousand cuts

Just a little more of the upcoming event stamp. I'm prone to cutting myself because I actually hold the material in the air rather than safely down on the desk while carving. On a related note, I just found out that I am woefully behind in my tetanus boosters. Oops.

The entire sky is now complete. The tree is next, then the man.

Girls, girls, girls...

So, I've finished all my carving for Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge and spent some time this morning putting together a logbook for this short pinup word of mouth series that will be posted just before the event.

The leading ladies for the soon-to-be-planted letterbox series

 

In the past, I've not been so hot to trot about logbooks.  I love old logbooks and the joy they bring when finding an old box, but putting them together in the past has really not been my thing.  It was always that list niggling thing that needed to be done before I could get out and plant - usually meaning that it was an afterthought and there are some pretty crummy logbooks out there in some of my older boxes.



That's changed in recent boxes and I've been trying my hand at different types of book binding.  I actually went so far as to pick up a couple books on it while visiting the Toronto craft show a few months back.  I've taken my time on a couple logs now... In particular, I spent quite a bit of time on the Touch of Voodoo logbook, though no one has mentioned it... I hope it is holding up well, it has no stitching...

So, with the need for a new logbook for this new series, I set off this morning to make a cute logbook to match the series.  Here's what happened:

All done, now they just need to be planted.  Everything seems to be falling into place for Wink Wink, hope you can make it!