Geocaching Swag

So from the experience I have from geocaching for the past month and a half (not even that long lol), I've gotten to see what kinds of treasures, or "geocaching swag", my fellow geocachers leave in the caches. I see things like little toys that you'd get from like Party City or the dollar store, coins, and very rarely I see nice things like the pathtag and geodes the girls and I found in our last geocache at Torrey Pines. I wish I'd see a little more thought put into these things...even though technically your real "treasure" is the hunt for the geocache rather than what's inside it. When we were first starting, I'd leave random little trinkets and toys I had around the house that I had no use for.

After geocaching a couple times, Mae talked about how she wanted to leave thoughtful items like a mixed CD or a cute little personalized card. I wanted to start leaving more original and handmade stuff as well. So for our trip to Torrey Pines for hiking and geocaching, I decided to crochet some cute hearts with the hopes of other geocachers being more inclined to take the handmade items.

I wanted to take it up a notch and make something cool and geocache-related (and also something a male would take...these hearts are too girly) so I looked on Pinterest for some geocaching swag ideas. One idea that I really liked (which was also really cheap by the way lol) was mod podge stones! The only materials you need are clear stones/gems (the kind you use as a filler in vases), pictures/scrapbook paper/newspaper/etc., mod podge (not pictured), scissors, a pencil/pen, and a brush or even just your fingers if you don't mind getting down and dirty ;P

I bought 2 bags of stones at the Dollar Tree for $1 each. For the pictures, I printed out 1" x 1" pictures of what I wanted and cut them up in circles to glue onto the flat backside of the stones. I also wrote out "<3WanderlustWarriors" on the back of each one so people can recognize who these little stones are from ;) I used a DIY version of mod podge (2 parts Elmers Glue and 1 part water) to glue the pictures to the stones. Here's the link to the tutorial I followed by a fellow crafter to make the stones.

When I first printed the pictures out, I used regular printing paper. I wanted to write WanderlustWarriors on the back but the colors bled through the back. So scrapped those and I printed my pictures out on photo paper instead and....success! Here you can obviously see what I'm talking about...

I made 30 so far from the first bag, with a few dud stones I messed up on, and I plan on making more with the second bag! The girls and I are planning on doing a geocaching trip down at Balboa Park next Tuesday so I'll be sure to bring a bunch to leave in the geocaches there! Here's how the final product turned out! (It looks much better in person though)