So You Want to Win a Car...

If you just want to help us get the Big Win and take our road trip, you can vote for us here! Eleven points the first day and 10 points each day thereafter to September 30.  If you want to learn how we started, read on.

WackyCapNTrish have entered a contest to win a car. 

At least... we weren't WackyCapNTrish when we started.  We were Caprice Rothe (Hands of E.T., alacaprice) and Patricia Tsoiasue (Handmade Penguin, Squigglemom, Trish).  Creative friends making things together every week.  Experimenting and playing with equipment and materials.

We're just people like you.  And we read the rules.  For this contest it's not ALL about the votes.  But please, do vote for us, because we want to win and that is one of the winning criteria.

Sure, I'll Make a Story for a Road Trip and a Car!

Road trips have a special place for Americans.  With so much distance to cover, so many differences in culture and landscape.  Route 66 anyone?  Dinosaurs, giant donuts and thermometers on the side of the road.  Lots of cool pop stop diners.

We were challenged to dream up our road trip.  I dreamed up Alaska.  A trip starting in Washington state with the car aboard a ferry on the Inside Passage.  That would still have been the trip, except I think that the Inside Passage is in International waters.

So we tossed around some other ideas and settled on a trip down the California coast, starting at Fisherman's Wharf where we would get up early to hear the sea lions and driving to Big Basin to see the giant redwoods.

South again to kayak in the ocean reserve at Monterey and south again to Carmel.

Pfeiffer State Park for more giant redwoods.

Pismo Beach to take photos of the monarch butterflies clustered on the Eucalyptus trees, and to see the elephant seals battling for supremacy.

Quite a trip, I'm already drooling.

But it wasn't enough because we weren't making things.

Caprice and I, we like to make things.  Whenever I go on vacation, it's a tiny bag for clothes and my toothbrush and a giant bag for all the things I will read and use to make things.  My toys.

We called it a game and gave it a name. 

The game is "The Finding and Making Things Game" (F.A.M.T.G.). That's what we would do.  Find things that people make, and interview those people, possibly show them some of the things that we know how to make.  Masks, Karakuri (paper automata).

We made a video and posted it.

I'd learned a bit about how to use Adobe Photoshop from a friend I worked with at one point.  Caprice is a graphic artist.  We sat together late a few nights in a row, and filmed in my rock garden that I made.  I even have a baby giant redwood there, to remind me of the forest.  If you're worried that it will grow to dominate my home and my neighbor's (because they will if you let them)... don't worry, it's in a pot.

It was fun making the video.  I do lots of videos for my Squigglemom YouTube channel (subscribe here), but it was the first time I'd made an actual story.  Caprice directs, so she showed me what to do.  I learned a lot about layering in Photoshop.

We gave us a name.

Sister Shari jumped right in to help.  She decided that we needed a fan page... because the most successful voting grants have fan pages... so we made one.  But to do that, we needed to give us a name.  Caprice had named one of the image files CapNTrish.  It seemed like a good name, but we couldn't get that name on Facebook.  It was taken. 

So... we are WackyCapNTrish because CapNTrish was taken.  I wish it could've been more exciting a reason than that.  That's where the road is taking us.

And now we have to learn how to be wacky.

Hm. I thought.  Maybe I should tell them about hovershoes and carrot flutes.  It's not that wacky, but some might think it is.

And we need to promote to get the votes.

Badgering our friends on Facebook was the first step.  But then we had to find other people to badger.

Trish got a Twitter account and started to learn how to tweet.

And Trish made cards that we gave out at the Orange County Mini Maker Faire.  And we continue to give them out everywhere we go.

We can badger everyone we meet now!

But we offer our time, too!

We're avid volunteers, and we drag our friends from those groups with which we volunteer into the game.  Some hesitate, but join in.  I'm sure some do out of obligation.  Some won't go quite that low and smile, accept our cards and say thank you.  We're offering our services, sometimes for free, hosting meetings and making appearances.

Don't forget to Blog.

WackyCapNTrish now needs to find folks in the Bay Area to visit, then all along the coast from there.  How best to do that than to blog about it?  Luckily for us Trish loves to blog and is very familiar with blogging on the Patch.com sites.  Trish blogs voluminously on the Belmont Shore Patch in Long Beach. 

We made a game to promote WackyCapNTrish.

I'm getting a bit lost in this Fusion Energi Adventure game.  Is it still about winning the car? Or is it about a road trip where we have to find people to visit?  Is it about either?  Or perhaps just about starting the WackyCapNTrish name?

We started a WackyCapNTrish YouTube channel.

We're confident that we will take this road trip, whether or not we get the grand prize. We'll need a place to post the videos.  So... now we have a WackyCapNTrish YouTube channel.  There are no videos yet, but you can be our first subscriber!

And now, we've made another game.  A game before the game.

The game before the game is called the WackyCapNTrish Game.

You simply print out a card decorated with WackyCapNTrish (and our drawing of a Fusion Energi), take it with you and take a photo with it.  Either showing your face or not, it's all good.  Ive attached the cards to make it easier for you.

Then you post it on our Facebook fan page. 

So far, the game has taken WackyCapNTrish to Long Beach, Westwood, Koreatown and Japan!

We just made a Pinterest account for the WackyCapNTrish Game and will put all the photos there. We're not really sure how Pinterest works, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.  For now, if you can't post to Pinterest, please post your images to our WackyCapNTrish Facebook fan page.
 
Wherever you are, we'd love if you could try to get us to be clear and it's often nice to have something recognizable in the background.

Is the game before the game catching on?  Not yet, but we're sure it will.  We just have to figure out how.

And this story? It is just beginning.

If you'd like to join the fray, you too can make a video and post it on the Fusion Energi Adventure site. 

If you do add your video, let Caprice and me know that you did.  We like to help people and will probably vote for you too!

And if you don't, please help us by voting for our video!  You can vote for us here!  Eleven points possible the first day and ten points each additional day to September 30th.