Trail Trophies
As a hiker, I wanted to make something to commemorate summits and trail memories. I looked around for souvenirs, but most of them were about specific parks or major summits like Mt. Whitney, Half Dome, or Rainier. There weren’t many keep sakes for individual trails that didn’t involve risking your life.
I started brainstorming ideas to fill that gap. At first, I thought about go-to trinkets like stickers and badges, but there was one issue: I’m running out of surface space for them! And surely that’s a problem for a lot of other people.
Considering how many individual trails we hike; I was worried people wouldn’t have space for it.
After some thought, I started thinking about creating little wooden trophies – trail trophies.
I made paper cut-outs to size and scale. Most of these trail trophies are digitally-made, and personally when I can pinch and zoom into a piece, it’s a struggle not to overdo it. Trail trophies are only 1.5 inches, and it would be no good if I made it overly detailed.
So for my workflow, I would make “paper prototypes” to tangibly see what composition and level of detail these badges should have. Once I had something I was happy with, I’d move onto painting or drawing it.
When designing the backing cards for these pins, I wanted to think about how people can personalize these. I want everything in Junky Junco to be about the owner’s memories as much as it is about mine.
I added a small field on the back where hikers can write the date, they completed their trek, making each pin a unique keepsake of their journey!
I want to say I’m excited to make more of these and expand the collection. Unfortunately, thanks to 45/47’s tariffs, I’ll probably have no choice to go back to stickers unless something changes soon.
I was able to make a few of these guys before things hit the fan. Good thing I was burning the midnight oil (and my health) since last November in anticipation for these policies. Though it was worse than my wildest imaginations!
