Geocaching Gemstone Swag - A Tutorial

Today I'm bringing another tutorial that combines two of my hobbies - geocaching & crafting!

If you're not familiar with geocaching, you can check it out here. It's a super fun way to get outside, have more adventures & cure your wanderlust!

For some caches that are large enough, it is customary to exchange little tokens. People leave little non-valuable items, and take other items left by other geocachers. There's an entire etiquette you can read at the website. It's especially appreciated by the younger geocachers like my son who will love to switch little toys and such.

I've seen these little gems as geocache swag around the internet, and I thought, "I need to make some of those, they're so cute." I also thought if we put our family's geocaching screen name on them, then we may make more geocaching friends! So if by some giant coincidence, someone reading this blog finds one of our gems, definitely leave me a comment and befriend us! That's so fun! It also just so happens to be this blog address, so maybe someone will put two and two together upon finding a swag...

So without further blabber, I'll let you know how I made our gems. I'm sure there are lots of different ways to do it out there, but here is mine.

I found these clear little gems at the $1 store.

They're about .6 inch in diameter, so that's the size circle I created in Cricut Design Studio.

I duplicated my circle so that I will have a picture to show on the magnified side, and a backside to show our geocaching name.

Next I wanted to make a circle with our Geocaching name. So I typed it with one word per line so it would fit and changed the types of fonts to choose from to "has a writing style".

The letters were really far spaced apart, so I changed the letter spacing so they would better fit in my circle.

Then, instead of messing with a font size, I just resized the entire block of text to .5 inches high so it would fit into my .6 inch circle.

There are plenty of tiny photos you could choose to fit on a small circle, but because it was so small, I decided to use wingding fonts to ensure the complexity of the icon would not be too difficult for a cricut pen to draw so small. Most computers come with wingdings and webdints. You can easily find these by selecting "system fonts" on your cricut font drop down menu.

If you do not have these fonts, or if you want to find a different ding font, there are plenty of free ones available online. I went to DaFont and downloaded a few new ones.

To install your new font, go to your downloads folder, and choose "Extract All" for the downloaded font.

Once the files are extracted, right click the actual font file and choose "install."

You will most likely need to close out of design studio and reopen the program to recognize the newly downloaded fonts. Make sure to save your swag work!

So I've typed a letter and I choose which ding font I want ...

Annnnd, it changes to a picture! I resize the width of the picture to fit the .6 inch circle.

Make sure that the circles each have a pair of scissors by them to ensure they will be cut. The photo icon and the words need to have a pen next to them to ensure they will be drawn by the Cricut.

To ensure that the Cricut will draw the icons and cut the circles around them, and not complete each action separately, you need to select all the items and choose "Attach".

Everything will then be one. If you feel you need to edit, you will have to "detach" before you can make changes on what you've already completed.

You're now ready to draw and cut. However, you have tons of gems to create! When you hit cut, it will show a preview. On the preview, you can change the amount of "project copies" to as many as you'd like to create. (Please Note: I was trying to create multiples on the actual program before I hit cut. This created a lot of problems and even froze my program a couple of times. It's much easier to duplicate the items this way than in the program!)

If you're using scrap paper, you can move the items around the 12x12 cutting mat to the location where you're planning to place your paper to cut.

Since the gems are so tiny, I recommend a very fine point pen. I was delighted to discover my American Crafts writing pens fit into the Cricut! I chose a .03 fine pen.

So I created a few different circles with different ding fonts I downloaded, and this was the result. I combined the icons with the words to create two sided circles.

Next I grabbed my self-leveling clear epoxy. It's super stinky & takes 24 hours to completely dry, but it does the trick magnificently!

I squirted the epoxy on the gems, spread it with a foam brush and stuck on my circle. Then I covered the circle with another layer of epoxy. I discovered that I should do only one at a time because it begins to harden rather quickly. Also, the self-leveling is important. It's pretty sticky and you feel like you're creating points and ridges when you move it around, but once it sits flat for a moment, it magically levels out very smoothly.

Next you must be patient and let them dry for the full 24 hours! They will stick together if you gather them too closely before they're fully dry!

Here's the final product! We have some Mickey heads for the Disney fans, some dinos and ice cream cones for kiddos, or some travel icons for adults to collect geocaching swag!

I cannot wait to start placing these in caches, and I hope to find others soon as well!

I hope this was helpful & maybe inspired some of you to pick up a new hobby!? I feel like you could also apply this tutorial to other projects, specifically this would work well with coasters or photo magnets!!

Leave me feedback if you use the tutorial to create something & let me know how it goes.

Thanks for looking!

Tutorial: DIY die with Cricut Design Studio

I'm not sure if anyone will be interested in this tutorial, if it will be helpful, or what, but I'm going for it here, trying to start a new aspect of this blog. Please leave your feedback - let me know if you find this useful, if you have questions (if I did not sufficiently explain a step), anything you want to say!

So here is a list of things I am not:
I am not a graphic designer.
I am not an owner of expensive computer programs used to make art or svg cut files.
I am not one to spend money on things I can do myself.

This is a list of things I am:
I am thrifty.
I am crafting savvy.
I am cheap.

That being said, I am not above buying a Cricut die cut if I really love it and plan to use it a lot. However, in the case of the die you will see me make here today, I could not find a svg cut file that I loved to use on my pages or other papercrafting items. There were cartridges which had latte files, but I did not like them, as they did not look like the cup near and dear to my coffee-loving heart. I found a free cut file on Pinterest, but it was for the Silhouette, and I'm a Cricut girl.

So I made one. I used simple shapes and free files available in the Cricut Design Studio to create a cut file that I love to use on my pages. I make this tutorial not only so that you can make it too, but also to show you that if you have a relatively simple idea, but cannot find a cut file for what you want, you can easily attempt to make it!

Here is what we are going to create with this tutorial!

So let's begin. I will use tools within the Design Studio such as slice & weld. If you are not yet familiar with them, you can find many Youtube videos to help. You will need to know these tools before beginning this tutorial.

First, I used the octagon shape to make the body of my latte. You can make it short and fat, tall and skinny, whatever looks best to your eye and on your project. You will see that the two I make on screen are different shapes.

In order to manipulate the shape into a size that you desire, you will need to unlock the shape.

Then I used a square, to slice away the portion of the octagon that I did not want. You make the square large enough to cover the portion you wish to cut off, then select the octagon and square shapes and choose the Slice function.

You will be left with the sliced portion twice and the rest of the square you used to slice. You can just discard these shapes by hitting the red X.

Now you have a cup!


Next I want to make the top. I think it looks best with rounded corners, so I go into "Insert Image" to find a round corner rectangle. To easily find the images I own or have uploaded or are free, I choose the "my images" filter before I search.

Cricut is generous and provides some free cartridges to people who buy their machines, so I believe most people have access to this free rectangle I chose. It had a non-rounded corner rectangle in the middle, which I do not want, so I hid it. You do that by closing the eyball next to the shape you do not want. It will not show, and it will not cut.

I then unlocked the round corner rectangle and resized it to the appropriate size for my cup top.

Next I need the top portion of the cup lid. I realized an upside down octagon would be the perfect shape, so I made an octagon and rotated it.

Then I used a square to slice the portion of the octagon that I did not want. Discard the shapes you no longer need.

I then layered the top of the lid onto the bottom of the lid, selected both shapes and hit the WELD button. The two became one. You can undo the weld and reposition a shape if the end result was not exactly what you wanted.

Next I wanted to make the sleeve for the cup. To get the exact same shape as the cup I made, I just selected the cup shape and hit the "duplicate" button.

Next I use my trusty square to slice the bottom portion of the second cup shape.

I discarded the two bottom sliced portions and reused the rest of the square to slice away the top portion of the second cup shape.

I make sure that all 3 pieces of my latte cup are different colors so that they will cut on different papers, and DONE! Now you have an adorable cut file that is customizable to whatever papercrafting project you wish to create!

Here are a couple of examples of projects I created with this cut file.

Thank you for looking & please leave me feedback on the usefullnesss (or lack thereof) of this post, or what I could do to improve it, or if you have any other tutorial ideas you wish for me to create!