Custom stickers! Sort of...

Yes, this is another Geocaching post. :)

With Geocaching, there are different levels of commitment to people who want to play (read: decide how much money you want to spend), and one of the things which is "a thing" in the game is to drop swag in to caches for other people to find (and possibly move around). From what I've seen, swag can vary between something really nice and expensive like a collectible coin to assorted "junk" (cheap stuff from the dollar store like little plush toys).

As much as I would like go throwing around wads of money and buying toys and keychains and other cool little knick-knacks to give away, I simply don't have the money for it. So I figured I'd try and make (modify?) existing things to hopefully make them a bit more interesting. The level I'm aiming at is interesting enough that someone sees it and goes "that's interesting" but not so interesting that they decide they want to keep it and add it to their collection! It's a fine line to aim for (made a bit harder that one person might look at, say, a hot wheels car and go "meh" while another might go "yes, score!")

So a while back, we found one of those cheap poker sets that someone threw out during verge pickup, so I used this tutorial (YouTube, 2min) to make a couple of little stickers to put on the middle blank part of chips:

So far, the cost for these is:

• Poker chips: "free" (would be approx. 10c each to buy more, in blocks of 200)
• Packing tape: $6.45 (I used about 20cm and have about 60m left)
• Toner: negligible amount (though I need to buy more toner anyway)
• And an afternoon of time... free? I had some spare time...

With these little thingies that I'm making to release out into the wild, I'm trying to keep my costs down to a minimum, due to not having a lot of spare money. However, I'm classing this as both a hobby (having fun) and being creative (making stuff). I've already had a go at etching aluminium (which I need to refine, but the concept is sound) and now I've made these stickers (I was aiming for waterslide decals, but these will do for now) and odds are that I'll want to figure out how to make other stuff on the cheap.

With these, the only thing holding the tape (and toner) onto the plastic chip is the residual glue from the tape after dissolving the paper backing (and on these I wasn't as thorough as I should have been and found there was still a bit of paper on there after it dried). I'd like to add some epoxy resin over the top to really make them pop, but another consideration apart from cost is not getting involved with too many toxic chemicals. That's why I went for salt etching instead of acid etching (which is faster).

I figure that I might need to drop a few more dollars and get a can of spray lacquer or other sealant to make the stickers a little more robust … but that'll be something for another day.