Ever have trouble finding a cool geocaching shirt? Maybe you want one with your pathtag art on it or perhaps you have an idea for a one shirt but don’t have a way to produce it. Arted Crafted can help. Join me as I talk to fellow geocacher, Shawn, from Arted Crafted.
Sources and Related Material
– Arted Crafted (Website)
– Arted Crafted (Facebook)
Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Geocache Adventures, the podcast where we explore everything geocaching. I’m your host, shadow Dragon one. I love geocaching. If you’re listening to this, you probably love it too. If you enjoy the podcast, consider sharing it with somebody that you think would love it. You can also follow. The podcast on Instagram and Facebook, and there’s a Facebook group as well, so you can join in the fun and share your adventures.
There’s also a Patreon page that you can join and unlock exclusive content.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Hi everybody. Amie Shadowdragn 1 here and with me today is Sean from Art Ed Crafted. Thank you for joining me today.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: It’s a pleasure to be here.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Now I have to admit. Company name. I always get a little tongue tied trying to say that. ’cause I wanna say arted crafted.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: That is correct. It’s arted crafted.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: It’s arted crafted. Okay. So then how come? So it is Arted Craft. [00:01:00] Okay. So how come the ED is capitalized?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: that’s an old logo. Um,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Okay, because I was gonna.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: the ed was capitalized because it was before it, incantation of arted crafted. It was, uh, run and started by my wife and she was doing other craft stuff, and, and her name is Eddie Renee. So that’s where the ed, the ed comes from. So when we started doing this, um, I kind of took over as the, I guess, the front man of art crafted and, and we’re doing this altogether, the two of us. So we made the,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Okay.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: ED lower case. That’s an old logo. If you’re looking at a, if you’re looking at the capital E the E, you know, that’s all.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. ’cause if you Google it, it lists the website as [00:02:00] with the capital ease.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I, I’ve been trying to figure out how to change that. I haven’t figured that out yet.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, so that’s funny because when I first heard of you guys when I started geocaching, I called it arted crafted,
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Mm-hmm.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: and I don’t remember who it was, but they corrected me. They said, no, it’s art ed crafted. So since then I started saying it that way and apparently I’ve been saying it wrong now for years. So.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Don’t worry, there’s geo catching reviewers that still say geo catching,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: That’s true.
Okay, well, arted crafted, that still does not roll off my tongue, but that’s a me problem. So anyways, I always like to ask my guest, how did you get started geocaching?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um. It first started, there was another vlog, a non [00:03:00] geocaching vlogger that we used to watch my wife and I and and he covered, uh, modern or what do you call it, um, current events, and gave his little. Fun little twist on him. Well, one day at the end of one of his episodes, he said he wasn’t gonna be on the next week because he and his fiance were going to Paris to go geocaching. And my wife and I are like, what’s geocaching? So we just kinda did a quick Google of Google search of what it was and, and uh, we’re like, oh, this sounds fun. And that was in October of And. So my wife started the account and we found in that first year we found seven Cashs. And uh, and then we had a great time, but in, but then we stopped because winter hit and you know, we, my wife didn’t, doesn’t like to go outside too much even now.[00:04:00]
But but for two years we didn’t find any geocaches. And then my job. moved me to Iowa I didn’t know anything about the area. So we found another website, um, called the roadside attractions or, or USA or something like that. we typed in our zip code and found these really weird places in, in our area, and by accident we found a geo cash and then it just kinda, uh, and we’re like, oh yeah, geocaching. And then we jumped back on the website and. That was in 2010, and I’ve just been going hardcore ever since.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: How did you guys accidentally find that Geo cash?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, we went to a place where here in Iowa called the tree in the middle of the road. And because it was on the list and this tree, according to the lore, planted by the original [00:05:00] surveyors of the county. Because they ran out of official surveying sticks, so they just broke cottonwood off and stuck it in the, uh, in the ground as a surveying mark. And, um, and then, and that’s just where two roads converged. And if you know anything about cottonwood, it will plant no matter. It’ll grow just about anywhere. You don’t have to do anything to it. Um, and now it’s about. Eight to 10 feet around and just giant, massive. the reason I found it is because I was trying to take a picture with my wife standing at the base of the tree and I was trying to get back far enough to get her and the tree in there. I stepped off the edge of the road and, and on and I fell into the ditch and this little micro container was right at the base of the stop sign I was at. So it was just
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. Uh, [00:06:00] yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh, that’s funny.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I didn’t get hurt, but it just, yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, that’s good. Uh, but that’s a crazy way to, to find a geo
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: So, as for those who may not be familiar, can you give us a general overview of what Arted crafted is?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Uh, artery crafted is a, we design our own, uh, custom geocaching shirts. we try to avoid the common geocaching related t-shirts that are, that are found on the marketplace because we feel that those are overdone. And, you know, I don’t wanna copy something that somebody else has done. So it all started, uh, me starting making t-shirts all started back in 2015.
I think. Uh, my kids were getting Christmas [00:07:00] time, a lot of people and my family included, would buy matching pajamas for their kids, like for Christmas Eve, while my kids were getting too old to be able to find matching pajamas for everybody. ’cause they were like. Most of ’em were older teens or, or, you know, uh, school. so my wife and I decided to try and make t-shirts and we stumbled around it a little bit and, made a set of t-shirts for everybody. Said like, Schulte, family Christmas and whatever. And we found we got broke out, our iron and ironed on the designs. And it looked nice. And then the next Christmas, we wanted to do better and then it just snowballed. and then one Christmas my wife decided she wanted to tell me about this device that she heard about called a cricket machine, and we could make better Christmas, uh, t-shirts with that. And I was like, [00:08:00] well, how much is it? And we talked about it and I’m like, this is crazy. not gonna spend. $300 for this machine so I can make t-shirts for Christmas.
I thought that was ridiculous. And I started thinking after Christmas. I was like, what can I do to make my money back off of this shirt? And I’ve never been in business for myself, but I just felt 300 bucks to make one set of t-shirts was outrageous. Um. came up with the design, um, and I wasn’t very artistic, so I paid somebody else to design it. And um, ended up actually being shirt here.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Cache and carry.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Cache and carry shirt and uh, you can’t really see the bottom of it. Lemme see. There we go. Anyway, it started out with this shirt We ended up [00:09:00] going to, I sold it on some Facebook groups that are geocaching related. And, um, one day someone asked me if I was gonna go to Geo Woodstock, this was 2019 by this time. And I was like, uh, I hadn’t thought about it. And I reached out and, uh. I talked with the, the organizers of the event and they said, sure, come on down. Well, you know, it doesn’t, won’t cost you next to nothing to to set up a booth. And I was like, okay. So I borrowed some money from a family member and headed on down to Geo Woodstock in 2019 and we didn’t hit our goal for our sales, but we. Made enough to let us know that there was some interest in what we were doing, so, and it’s just been snowballed ever since.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: So you’ve been going to events for six years [00:10:00] now.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Minus Covid, but yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh, right. Yeah. That was a crazy time.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: How many events do you go to a year typically?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, let’s see. Usually we do, we start our year in March with Texas Challenge. Um, and then we do, um, let me think. We did Mango, but that’s an event is every, every five years and we’re gonna do Mango this year. Moga we’ve done every year for several years. Uh, we’ve done geo Woodstock every year since we started. Um, let’s see, Midwest Geo Bash, um, uh, we did going caching twice. Uh, three times. Three times. so usually it’s right around five or six this year it’s gonna be. Um, [00:11:00] I don’t have a number, but as many as we can hit this year because we did a picnic in the park in January down to Florida. did Borama in Alabama we just did Texas Challenge a couple weeks ago this weekend we’re doing, uh, Moga. So yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Nice. Do you get to do much caching while you’re there?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, in the past, no. Uh, this year is gonna be different because of my employment situation. I lost my job in November ’cause the company closed. when that happened, I talked my wife into, uh, my wife works from home, so I told her, I said, Hey, when the Florida event comes up, we should just pack up and stay down south for three months. And she had to reach out to her company. And that’s what we did. We left [00:12:00] Iowa, headed down to Florida in January, and we just got back like almost two weeks ago.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: um, now that we know her company will let her work on the road, we’re gonna try and do as many events as we can with her working on the road. Um, I did. I will be starting a new job on the first, but is, they allow, they’re gonna allow me to, you know, basically set my own schedule however I want. So, um, as long as I don’t abuse it, I don’t think they’ll have a problem with me staying, you know, out for too long.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Great. So an unfortunate event has silver lining after all.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Right. God bless me for that.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. Well, I’m glad it worked out. All right for you guys.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: It’s been an adventure.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: [00:13:00] Oh, I’m sure.
You have standard, uh, options available for people to just buy, but you also have the custom items you mentioned. Can you tell us what kind of custom items you have?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, we can do, um, one of my favorites are our path tag shirts hats. If you have your own, your design for a path tag, we can get, we’ve partnered with path tags.com and we can get the art direct from them and print your path tag design on Um. There’s my pass tag right there on my hat. Um, we also have it on, hold on. I think I have one right here. Hold on. Yep. Coffee mugs. Just about anything you wanna print it on. Um, [00:14:00] and if, if you have a specific design idea for something else, like, um. If you and your friends always go geocaching together and you want a, a shirt design, you know, like a Bob Geocaching team or something, you know, I’ll, I can up some design and, see if you like it or not, and I can print that for you. So.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, you actually did the uh, the trackable geo goat bandana for me, and it turned out awesome.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, I did. That was, that was a, uh hmm. I, I had never, I never done anything for a goat before, so that was interesting.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: First time for everything.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Right. Matter of fact, we just got a new product I posted online today. Um, that I’m taking pre-orders for our next three events. Um, it’s a safety vest, uh, [00:15:00] like a safety orange vest, and geo cash search team on the back. And then right below the waist it says Stay 528 feet back. It should be on the, it should, it should be on the homepage of our, of my, uh, page.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I saw that on Facebook. It looks really awesome.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: What would you say is your best selling product?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, well it seems like one of our bestselling designs was one that we call Four Corners. Uh, it’s a, it’s just a standard, standard compass rose on the, on the front and it all. Cardinal points. It just says geocaching, geocaching, geocaching. Um, and if you, yeah, that’s, that’s always a top seller. and I will say that’s not my design. [00:16:00] Um, that came up. That was a, uh, an idea from a another Geocacher and the DTC Bears and Math mate, that was their design. And, um. You know, so um, I make a dis design for somebody, if it sells very well, I will reimburse you the price of your shirt that you bought from me.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh, nice. You have so many products on your website, how do you decide what to take to events? I imagine you can’t take everything with you.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh, goodness. I, I have no space. If I had, um, if I took everything. Um, how do I choose? Well, it’s a combination of what I know has been selling and, uh, there’s always right in the middle, the front, middle of my table is always some of the newest designs. Um, they’re usually right where my [00:17:00] banner is that says across the table it says already crafted.
It’s a white banner. are usually the newest designs. Um, but if, um. What was it? My wife and I always argue over different designs on which ones will sell and which ones won’t. She’s like, oh, that one, nobody likes that. It’s horrible. And then I’ll print it on a shirt and it’ll sell. Um, there, there have been times when I’ve, I’ve come up with ideas that didn’t sell at all. Um, and I was, I was like, oh yeah, I know this one’s gonna sell. Matter of fact, I came up with this design and it said. All it was was some font. It said what part of, and then it had a rot 13 cipher across the front. And then it said, don’t you understand? And if you can read rot, if you can just read ROT 13, it would say, what part of, let’s go geocaching.
Don’t you understand? And nobody bought [00:18:00] it.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, I don’t know many people that can just read ROT 13, but I, I like the idea. It’s a fun idea. But yeah, that’s a hard one to.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Right.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: What would you say is your favorite design?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, I gotta say this one is, is one of my favorites ’cause it’s, it’s my first, um, but. My favorite design. Hmm. One that sells well, no. Um,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: That’s fair.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I gotta say one of my, of my favorite designs was, is, um, we have some Bigfoot theme designs and, uh, those are always fun. I got two of them. One that one that says, uh. I wanna be the one that finds a geo [00:19:00] cash with Bigfoot and, and the other Bigfoot design says found a geo cash with Bigfoot and nobody believes me either.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I love that.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Have you ever had somebody reach out wanting to do a custom design that you could not do for some reason, copyright or technical issues, or some reason that you could not do a design?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, I automatically tell people that I can’t do anything that’s a copyright. So if they bring me something with some other art, um, I’ll tell them I can’t use that because of copyright or, but to this point in time, I think no. Once I, if if it’s because of copyright, they’re just like, well, I understand. And, um, I think it’s only happened like once or twice. And then of, and then of course we came up with a, a workaround. [00:20:00] there’s always ways to get around copyright as long as you’re, um, the copyright law says as long as you’re doing it in parity or, or the image is changed by so much of a percentage. So of fact, well I have a shirt that I put out for a couple years ago with for May the fourth be with You Day, and it’s got Darth Vader, or I took Darth Vader and blended it with Signal the Frog. And so I have what I call Darth Signal on the front it says, I find your lack of geocaching disturbing.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Nice. And since you blended the two together, I guess it fell into the, the parody slash, change percentage.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yep. Exactly. But it’s not [00:21:00] really signal, so, ’cause you meshed them two up together. It’s a whole new character, but you can look at it, green Darth Vader with an antenna coming out of his head. And instead of the lightning bolts, I put like the wifi signal off the, coming off the top of the antenna.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Okay. So there are ways, I imagine you have to be very careful though when you invoke those.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I was more concerned about, um, Disney coming after me for. Then, then, then hq.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. I think I would be too, if I had to pick one of those to be worried about.
Yeah. Oh gosh. Not a battle you’d wanna find yourself in.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh no. I would just stop. I’d be like, yep, nope. Stop selling that. Sorry.[00:22:00]
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Has there ever been anything that you didn’t realize was copyrighted that you put out, that you found out later and had a pool?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, I had a custom job that someone asked me to do for their nephew, and I got the art, found the art on the internet, before I told him I could print it, I said, I, I looked it up and. It was a cartoon character from like over 70 years ago, and think it was like almost 80 years old. So I sent it into my printer thinking, oh, it’s out of copyright. apparently Warner Brothers re renewed the copyright on that like 10 years ago. So they said they couldn’t print it, and I didn’t even that would’ve been an issue. But, uh. What was the cartoon character? It was, I can’t remember the name of the [00:23:00] cartoon character, but it was a, a large baby duck with a, a wore diaper, uh, from like the fifties or sixties or something like that.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Okay.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, I can’t remember the name of the guy, but they said, Nope, they shut me down on that.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Interesting.
Well, it’s good that they were able to double check it.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. Well, they, uh, since then I found out that they have software that scans all new art,
So I run it through that now before, if someone brings me art, I run it through that and find out if it’s copyrighted or not.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: That’s gotta help a lot.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yes.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: So you mentioned with your custom path tag shirts that you had to partner with path tags to be able to do those. What was that process like?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, when I first started doing that, doing path tags, [00:24:00] I needed people to supply the art for me. Um, and then art I, they were providing most of the time was not the, the exact quality that I needed to be able to get the best quality prints. they’d send me a small jpeg, usually 500 by 500 of their art.
Now that is exactly what Path Tag says that they want when you submit art to them. Um, but when I do it, I need 2,400 by 2,400, uh, PNG or better. Uh, that gives you a higher resolution, um, and actually makes all of your lines crisp and clear when you print ’em out. But now, uh, basically what happened was I was spending. Hours trying to clean up people’s art to make it decent to print. And I just reached out to path tags and it was like, [00:25:00] um, I told ’em who I was and what I was looking to do, and I just sent them an email and I never heard back from him. one day we were at the following summer. After I sent that email, Mike from Path Tags came over to me and he’s like, Hey, I got your email some months ago and I never replied back to you. And yeah, I think we can work together on this. So he actually, he’s been a, big help with, uh, helping me because I pr I promote the path tags and a. Another way for, to get their name out as well. uh, people just love wearing their, their whatever their favorite path tag is.
I’ve had, most recently, I had a, customer who’s now ordered from me three different path tags of their design hats, shirts, mugs, [00:26:00] pullover, tee, uh, sweatshirts, three different tags, and, and, uh. she, she’s a, um, wonderful, wonderful lady. So I love, I love working with all of my clients.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Has anybody ever tried to order somebody else’s path tag art.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Not to my knowledge. Oh, wait a minute. Yes. Um, somebody told me they wanted to order a path tag. They wanted their sister’s path tag, um, they wanted to give it to her as a birthday present. And I told them I couldn’t do that because she owns that art. Um, so she had to tell her sister then her sister had to email me, yes, it’s okay if, you know, you print my art. I kind of had to first her bubble on that. But she, she loved, she loved it anyway.[00:27:00]
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh, that’s kind of funny.
So if people are interested in getting the products, they can go to you at event, obviously if you’re there. But if they wanna see the full catalog, you have your website, is that the best way to reach out to you and to order things just through the website?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, if, if all you wanna do is order, yes, you can, you can go through the website, uh, arted, A-R-T-E-D, crafted, C-R-A-F-T-E d.com. Um, and you can, you know, pick and choose what you want. Um, I can, there’s also an option on there to customize your shirt. So if you want your, your name on the back with your, uh, trackable code, you can add that as an option as well. But, if, if you just don’t need to. Uh, reach out to me about some custom work that you want done. You can always email me, Shawn, [00:28:00] S-H-A-W-N, at arted crafted.com.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Okay. If people have, a concept that they want, but they don’t have artwork. Is that something you’re able to work with them and help them design?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, I, um. I, we can call them, we can do a, a zoom meeting or whatever, to figure out what they want and try and nail down some specifics. Um, I can throw some art together and, you know, like, Hey, uh, is this what you’re looking for, something like this? Or, no, that’s trash. I want to go some other direction and, you know, uh, it didn’t have this, or it needs to have that or, you know, usually, um. I haven’t done too many shirts like that, but, um, when I have, it’s been basically a, I just get an idea as to what they’re [00:29:00] looking for, put something together we go from there.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Okay. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us about arted crafted?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, I, I have been looking into, I’m looking into expanding into other, uh, types of apparel. I’m considering look, trying to make a line of shoes, geocaching themed but I’m still looking for a vendor that can actually, uh, put those together for me. So. But other than that, I got, um, hats of all kinds.
I can do stocking caps, I can do ball caps, I can do mugs, tumblers shirts, obviously, um, you [00:30:00] know, unisex men’s shirts, v-necks for women or, or almost any kind of style shirt you might want. Matter of fact, uh. The last Mango Madness. I did an all over print Hawaiian themed shirt because, uh, this town of Colby, Kansas, where the event was, calls themselves the oasis of the plains and they got palm trees there. So yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Nice. So everybody should definitely check out the website to take a look at everything that’s offered. There is a, there’s a lot on there. There’s a lot on that website.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: And if you know how to, uh, any, you or any of your viewers know how to make a website more user friendly, shoot me an email because my
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Soon as I figure that out, I’ll let you know.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, my wife says that it’s very [00:31:00] chaotic. I’m lucky it looks the way it does.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I mean, it looks pretty good. It’s easy to navigate. It’s, there’s just a lot on it.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: There’s a lot of designs to sort through. For sure.
Let’s see. We covered all the questions I had, unless there’s anything else. I know you just mentioned the shoes.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Um, no, that’s, I think, goodness, I love, I love going out and, uh, traveling to events and, and meeting new people and. You know, sharing what I have with the public. part of the things, that fru only thing that really frustrates me in this business is the, I actually was at an event in ba, Alabama, the Borama, found one of my [00:32:00] shirts that never sold, but apparently somebody, uh. Acquired the image and made it for themselves.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yes. So, uh, not a fan of that, but, you know, I don’t know how you keep people from doing stuff like that, but
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, that’s a tough one in this digital age.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: It took a lot to keep me from, um, really going off. She’s like, oh yeah, this is one of my favorite shirts. I’m like, I bet it is.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: So I, I put, I put that design up, I think it was during Covid. I put it up and nobody bought it. Um, so I just took it down. You know, I didn’t sell any, so why keep it up there? And, uh, I see this one lady walking around with it on and I’m [00:33:00] just like. I was like, really? Really?
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: So there was no doubt that it had been hijacked and printed.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: It was a little, it was a little bit changed, but not enough for me to know, not enough for me to think that that wasn’t my design. I don’t want to
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yikes. That’s gotta be so frustrating.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, I was like, my wife, I took a picture of this lady’s shirt. She’s like, oh, here, take a, here, take a look at it. I’m like, I’m gonna send this picture to my wife. Oh, I like it so much. I sent it to my wife and, she had some words to say to me.
I’m glad my wife wasn’t there because she, she wouldn’t have been able to control herself.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I wouldn’t blame her one bit like that is. That is insane.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, I mean, I mean, I understand, you know, you’re not, you don’t know who you’re gonna see when you’re out, you know? Um, but I. I’m certain she didn’t. And I called her on it and, and she said, oh, I, [00:34:00] ’cause I asked her, I was like, Hey, where did you find that shirt at? She goes, oh, I don’t know. I found it somewhere on the internet. Here, let me look for it. And she’s on her phone and she’s like looking and looking and looking and she’s like, seem to be able to find it now. And I looked her straight in the face and I was like, I know you can’t find it. ’cause it was my shirt and I took it down years ago ’cause nobody bought it. And she’s like, oh, but it looks so good on me. I’m like.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. So, no, that’s that. It’s, it’s just been crazy. Um, so I do love, um, one of the things I do like to do when I’m out geocaching is just meet up with other cashers and do what other cashers do. Just go find some geo cashers somewhere. Um, and, and, uh, you know, one, and what’s the other thing we like to say at, at our, whoops. Camera fell. Um, you’re gonna support, you know, if, if, gonna [00:35:00] support, uh, any, if you’re gonna buy a geocaching shirt, buy it from another geocacher, because all of those geocaching shirts you find online, they’re probably not made by other geocacher. And I can, and I can promise you that a good 90% of them are not printed here in the United States. Um, so, you know, if you’re gonna support Geocacher, at least support a Geocacher, uh, teacher and company in your state or country, uh, wherever your, that may be, whether it’s United States or Canada or, UK or wherever you live. Um, I’d like, I’d prefer you to buy ’em from me, but, you know, support your local economy, your local companies.
’cause uh , you know,, if I could do this by myself without a full-time job, I would, but it covers the bills of just keeping itself alive.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, that can be hard enough to do for sure, but you also have designs that you can’t [00:36:00] find any place else.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: All of the designs on my website are just that 100% my designs. I’ve, I come up with the ideas myself, between me, between my wife, you know, a kid or two might have an idea and I’ll work it up. But, usually, usually these designs are all of my own concept. Um, and people ask me before, where do I get my ideas?
I was like, well. You’ve all been out somewhere doing something with somebody and somebody said something and you’re like, Hey, that should be on a shirt. And I can do that now. So now, you know, put some, I, when I do, when I do come up with a design, I like to put a little twist or a hu some humor to it, uh, just to make it, uh, make you chuckle a little bit, maybe.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Definitely.[00:37:00]
You definitely have some awesome products and I’ve ordered a couple of things from you and I have loved them and the quality has been excellent.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Thank you.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I can speak from experience on that, so I, I highly recommend people to check out your website ’cause there is, there is so much, it’s almost overwhelming just how much you have on there, but there’s some really great stuff.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Well, there’s, there’s times when, um, I just get idea after idea after idea, and I just pump ’em out and my wife is like, you need to slow down. Stop putting stuff out there. then for the past, I don’t know how many months, I’ve just felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere with Nothing. I had no ideas coming through.
And, um. I just threw together some designs just because, well, I gotta do something, and I just, I don’t know, I just wasn’t feeling it. And, uh, I don’t know what happened, it just, but, [00:38:00] but, uh. When we were coming up on January this year, I had design after design after design that I came up with. And my wife’s like, don’t put ’em out right now.
Save ’em for the events. So yeah, we always come up with at least one or two new designs. What at every event that we go to, um,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, well, we wanna make sure we have at least something, one thing brand new for people to see when they come to our table. Whether you go to a lot of events or, You know, one or two events a year, you’re gonna see something new on our table. But we’ve had, we’ve got designs that have been on our table since, almost since day one. Um, but because they just keep selling and there’s other designs that have been on the table for maybe one year and don’t sell too well. So they get, uh, they get, you know, sold in, uh, what was it? bags [00:39:00] we take every year. shirt that we felt didn’t move too well, we put ’em in a grab bag and sell ’em for And go to, you come to our table and you’ll just see this giant pile of um, uh, paper bags. They have sizes on ’em and they’re $15 a piece. You don’t know what you’re gonna get. And it tells you what size it is so you can pick one so you know it’s gonna fit you. And, um, love ’em. They eat ’em up. They’ll just, they’ll just devour ’em. uh, I kind of fought, that was my wife’s idea, and I, and I actually fought, uh, fought her on this. I was like, no, no, we’re losing money on this. She’s like, yeah, we’re losing money by transporting them and not selling them. So, so fine, fine.
We’ll sell ’em as grab bags and Oh my goodness. Uh, that was, that was the hottest ticket of the event. We sold more grab bags than we sold any other single design on our [00:40:00] table.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: You know, it’s just little money, a little profits better than no profit, you know?
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, and I imagine it also helps because otherwise you have stock that’s just sitting around if you’re, if it’s not selling, so it resolves that issue as well.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. As a matter of fact, um, what was it? Were they. Midwest Geo Bash. Um, it’s one of our absolute favorite events and we’ve been doing grab bags at Midwest Geo Bash for two, three years now. I got people who will meet me at my campsite when we first move in on Wednesday at the of the event. And they’re like, do you have grab bags?
I gotta get some of them grab bags.
Last year we did mystery boxes. We had two mystery boxes and we sold them for $60 a box and it had what, [00:41:00] $80 retail value of stuff inside. And one lady came back to me and she says, I didn’t get my money’s worth for this box. And, and it was an ammo can. Uh, $20 value a t-shirt token. It’s almost a $30 value some other, other swag that was like, I think it was like $20 for the other swag that we put in there. I had to point, I had to show it all off to her. I was like, this is worth this much. This is worth this much. This is worth this much. You got $80 worth of stuff for $60.
And she’s like, oh, I didn’t even see the T-shirt token there. I just thought it was full of the other swag.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Oh.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. So, but anyway,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Where the box is popular?
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: We only had two that year. I don’t know if we’re gonna do any more this
or not, but, we’ll see. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll try and do something with that. [00:42:00] Yeah. They sold before I was even open on the, on day one. Um. One guy asked me on Wednesday and I told him about the mystery boxes, and he goes, well, save me one. Alright. So I saved him one. I only had one more left. We were open up for like five minutes on Friday, the day of the event, and it, it just, it was gone. The lady came up and I, I, she said, well, what’s in the box?
I said, I can’t tell you. It’s a mystery box. It’s full of geocaching stuff. And I said, you’re gonna get your money’s worth out of that, I promise you that. And. She bought the other one. So I think she bought some
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: bag, some, uh, the, the raf uh, what, what do we call ’em? Grab bags. I thought she bought like a couple grab bag t-shirts and, and some other stuff.
But it was, uh, always an adventure.
The other thing we started doing this year is we started taking our dog with us to events and
well , this is the second year that we’ve had our [00:43:00] dog. um, I’m a, when it comes to animals, I’m a advocate for, you know, train your animal to behave appropriately. You know, care how big or small your animal is.
It, you know, if you don’t. Train your dog to behave or your cat, you know, they’re gonna behave like they want to. Um, this is where you get the little yappy dog who does, who might become aggressive to people when you don’t want ’em to be, um, or the big dog or, or whatever size animal it is. But, but anyway, so we took Nala to, on our adventure this, this year from January to March. And she, She was fine. She just stayed in the, in the car. Not in the car, but we tethered her to the, to the door so she wouldn’t run off. But uh, just kind of hang, hung out in the back and everybody pet her and she was happy as a glam back there. And, uh, our next event in Borama, we [00:44:00] purchased a, um, like a pop-up kennel kind of thing. And, uh, we, you know, we’d feed her and water her and like we, you know, you normally do, but make sure she’s taken care of, but she would just, know, hang out in there and behaved and didn’t cause a problem at all. So, um,
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I’m sure she loved all the attention.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: She loved it, loved it, loved it. we had on more than one occasion, well, frankly, we went to a Texas challenge I went to one of the pre-event. Of meet and greets and was at a restaurant and we, because I had Nala, we sat out on the patio and another lady came in with a small dog with a service vest the the waitress complimented me and she said, Nala, our dog was behaving better than the service dog that was in there.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: [00:45:00] Oh wow.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. I was like, well, thank you.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Wow. That’s something, ’cause those service dogs, the amount of training they have to go through, that’s insane.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I have an opinion about the, the service vest. if you’re, if you have a seeing eye dog or a heart attack dog, or some kind of medical dog that can sniff out whatever medical thing you have going on, Those dogs go through a lot of training. But if you have what they call an emotional support dog, nobody to certify that.
Just because the dog makes you feel better or I, I don’t know. Yes, you can pay somebody online to get you a certificate that says your dog is an emotional support dog, and you put a little vest on ’em and next thing you know, our society says you can’t question them on it.
And, uh, I’ve seen all kinds of animals out there like that. And. And I don’t know how a, [00:46:00] a, a misbehaving animal is an emotional support and, you know, animal, if they’re just around all over the place and, you know, barking, nine times out of 10, I’ve seen those animals that are actually carried through the wherever they’re at. Um, like I, I dunno, I don’t get it. Still train your animal. That’s
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Agreed.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: I don’t care what kind of animal it is.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah. Just be a responsible pet owner.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Right.
amie–shadowdragn1-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Yeah, I agree.
Well, Sean, thank you so much for joining me today and talking us to us about Arted crafted and and geocaching. It has been a lot of fun chatting with you today.
shawn-of-arted-crafted-_1_03-26-2025_170520: Thank you.
You’ve been listening to Geocache Adventures with me, shadow Dragon One. If you’d like to get in touch, you can reach out to me on Facebook, [00:47:00] Instagram, or go to geo cash adventures.org and you can find the information on the contact page. Theme music is by the travel bugs. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Have you heard of FTF Magazine? It’s the magazine for Geo Cashers. It is full of articles and pictures all submitted by Geo Cashers. Just like you. I’m a subscriber myself and I love it. My favorite part is the little snippets on the edges of the articles on all the different pages. Those are my favorites.
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