Making your own Swag

Something we all get, aka Swag, is trade items left by Geocachers. One of the rules of GC is that if you take something from the container, you must replace it with something of your own that is of equal or greater value. Emptying the contents of a GC and replacing it with a handful of pennies, not cool. Unless they were rare I suppose. :p Anything not family friendly for all ages, is also not good swag. This omits leaving lighters, tobacco, alcohol, knives, and fireworks. Another rule is to remember to sign the logbook. That is the way to show that you did in fact find it, and since most caches are monitored, the owner normally double checks.

Anyways, in our adventure of GC, we've come across some very interesting and some not so interesting swag. In one cache we found, there was a personalized laminated business card like item that had the cachers username on it. I thought that was pretty neat. If I could make our own swag to leave, then other cachers could look us up and see how far the swag came from or a bit about us. I really like to place tradeables for the next cachers. So a run onto Pinterest, and a little creativity, I was able to make our own swag.

 Pictured above is my swag bag. I've got a nice collection of personalized stones, paracord dragonflys I make, collectible Lego minifigures (ones I have many of), pens from work and places I've been, military currency, Sonic coupons (I love these! They fit in almost every size container), and just some odds and ends.

I downloaded a sticker making template into Microsoft. Then used Paint to draw, cut, paste my own personalized labels. Copied it over to the template. Printed out they are square, then I cut them to circles. Using Outdoor ModPodge, I glue them to clear stones I got from Hobby Lobby, and then after they dry I cover the paper again and just around the rim of the stone. I only do the bottom part because when I seen this similar thing done, they covered the entire rock. It made it shiny, but it looked fake, and tended to peel off when scratched against something. On several of the stones I also stuck magnets onto the backs of them. The printouts have a clever little info on them, then my username and my state. Even though I don't have many other geocache friends, I like to think that the person that picks up something that I made will remember me. I've also done the personalized printouts glued to the inside of pop bottle caps.

I really like to use paracord in things around the house. I can now add paracord people to my swag creations. Here's a pic of the ones we do, but it's not my own.

Do you make your own swag? Show them off. ;)