Cuckoo!
I am a geocacher. Geocaching is like an outdoor scavenger hunt. Sometimes, it can be indoor, such as library caches. I knew that I wanted to create my own library cache, but oftentimes they are quite special and I did not want to disappoint my local geocaching community. I went on a mission to look around a particular branch of the county library system. I looked around the small library, took photos, noted how fun the children’s section looked, and went to the drawing board.
I decided to use a series of smaller birdhouses that contain the numbers to open a lock on a large cuckoo clock.
Here are the three smaller birdhouses.
Do you see the different birds on the birdhouses? Those are the order in which the lock is to be opened: Goldfinch, Bluebird, Chickadee.
Here is the clock in situ. This “tree” was the main inspiration for the clock. The clock was hung with a soft yarn so as not to damage the tree.
The base of the clock is a plain wooden craft box that I’m sure I purchased from Michaels. I covered the box with scrapbooking paper using a strong glue. The blue fanciness around it is a wooden frame that I also purchased from Michaels and painted using a blue acrylic. I was lucky that Michaels also had wooden leaves and a wooden bird, which I painted then covered the front with a bumpy embossed scrapbooking paper. The frame around the bird and the circle for the clock part were all wooden parts from Michaels that I painted with acrylics. The clockwise CUCKOO! were all from an alphabet stamp set that I have, and probably stamped using black StazOn. The chain for the bottom I purchased at a hobby store and the pinecones were actually Christmas ornaments that I thought looked useful from the previous Christmas. The bird is needlefelted and has a tiny black bead for each eye.
A sideview of the clock shows you the clasp without the lock on it. The clasp was easy to install, but people often forget to shut the regular one. It’s not that big of a deal, it’s just annoying to me as a creator.
When you open up the clock, the interior is gold and has several birds on the door. They’re fun stickers that I found and, yes, I bought more in case these come off. There you see the small box that houses the logbook (necessary for a geocache) with a pen or pencil and small goodies for kids and kids-at-heart.
And, for those that like geo-stats, it was hidden on 1/5/16 and has 16 favorites with 64% of people favoriting it. I think it would have more, but the town is out-of-the-way. I think most of the locals have solved it, because I see names on the log that I don’t know or are regular names and not geonicks. The librarians love having it there. This was my first library cache and now I have two! I’d like to make more, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet (and library caches are a hot commodity around here). Here’s the GC: GC698G8
Thank you all for taking a gander at my creation. I’m pretty proud of it.
Oh, and if you have geocaching-related questions, I can answer most, I’d like to think, since I’ve found almost 3,000 of them!
So… do the libraries in your area need a geocache in them? Because it can be a pretty fun project! My geonick is “irid3sc3nt”
this so much. It makes me heart happy to hear that. So who’s going to craft it? wiggles eyebrows at you