Darby Hunter, a local artist, places items into a trinket box she hung at Golf N' Stuff, 6503 E Tanque Verde Rd. in Tucson, Ariz. on April 9, 2026. Hunter says she was inspired to create the box after seeing them in Phoenix. People can take a trinket and leave a trinket. Hunter says she wants to make more and hang them in other places around Tucson.
Tucson artist Darby Hunter has always felt a calling to encourage people to express their creativity through crafting. Now, she is bringing even more joy to Tucson, with the city’s first trinket box.
Art, Hunter said, has been a part of her life for as long as she can remember.
“I've always done art,” she said. “I grew up in a family where doing art was highly encouraged. My mom does cross stitching, my dad's always been a general artist, he's always drawing pictures of his cars and his motorcycles and whatnot.”
Hunter said she expanded into learning digital art after her stepdad got her an iPad for her 21st birthday in 2019.
“I've been doing digital art pretty heavily ever since,” she said. “I started making stickers on a whim, because I had seen someone else do stickers, and I was like, ‘that would be so fun,’ so I made one sticker design, got those ordered, and it spiraled from there.”
She now has more than 100 sticker designs, which she sells on her online shop, at local businesses including Bookmans, 6230 E. Speedway Blvd.; Saguaro Square, 50 S. Houghton Road; and Monsoon Mystics, 657 W. St. Marys Road, as well as at local markets.
“I started doing more craft fairs and more community style things after my stepdad died, because he was really big into doing stuff for the community,” she said. “It's been so exciting doing craft fairs and donating artwork and all sorts of fun things like that.”
Her biggest inspiration for her art, Hunter said, is her pets, the desert landscape and the wildlife of southern Arizona.
“I do a lot of animals, and I do a lot of desert. Those are the two main things that I do,” she said. “I love drawing the desert a lot. I'm surrounded by it all the time, so cactuses are a big thing. I really love doing the Saguaro cactus and the prickly pears; those are my two favorite cactuses.”
Recently, she said, she has started drawing more desert animals as well, including javelinas, coatimundis and birds. And the scope for her work goes far beyond just stickers; she does paintings, keychains, greeting cards, postcards and has even written a book, “The ABC’s of Cats.”
Her newest creative venture, however, is bringing trinket boxes to Tucson.
Darby Hunter, a local artist, installs shelves into a trinket box she hung at Golf N' Stuff, 6503 E Tanque Verde Rd. in Tucson, Ariz. on April 9, 2026. Hunter says she was inspired to create the box after seeing them in Phoenix. People can take a trinket and leave a trinket. Hunter says she wants to make more and hang them in other places around Tucson.
Like little free libraries, trinket boxes have been popping up in cities across the country, with dozens of registered sites on sidewalkjoy.com.
Hunter said her interest in the trinket boxes started when she saw posts on social media showcasing some of the boxes in Phoenix a few weeks ago.
“It's kind of like geocaching,” she said. “You get the location, you go find it, you open the box and get a little knick knack. In Phoenix, they had them mounted outside of houses in neighborhoods, outside of shops, or inside of shops, and you just go in and put a little trinket in, take a little trinket out. It's so simple, but it was so much fun.”
She said she went to five boxes in one day. Some of the things she saw in the boxes were kids meal toys, paracord bracelets and small jewelry containers.
“There were little, itsy bitsy molded plastic gnomes, and there were a bunch of stickers, keychains, almost anything you can think of,” she said.
Hunter said she felt inspired to quickly purchase her own box and bring the trend to Tucson.
“My friend is the general manager of Golf N’ Stuff, and I said something about it, and she said, ‘that actually sounds like a great idea, we should do that at Golf N’ Stuff,’ ” Hunter said.
Darby Hunter, a local artist, created a trinket box and hung it at Golf N' Stuff, 6503 E Tanque Verde Rd. in Tucson, Ariz. on April 9, 2026. Hunter says she was inspired to create the box after seeing them in Phoenix. People can take a trinket and leave a trinket. Hunter says she wants to make more and hang them in other places around Tucson.
Her box is now installed inside Golf N’ Stuff, 6503 E. Tanque Verde Road, for anyone to visit and leave their own treasures.
“I put 30 stickers inside of there, I put 15 keychains, I put some bracelets, I put ceramic figurines, there's four or five of those in there,” Hunter said. “I have 3D printed guys, fidget dragons, I have an octopus, dinosaur, hedgehog, a little tiny chicken, and I have even more stuff that I'll put in there at the grand opening.”
The grand opening to celebrate the new trinket box is scheduled for April 18 from 12 to 2 p.m. at Golf N’ Stuff, with the ribbon-cutting ceremony at 1 p.m.
“We're gonna have a big scale trinket trade,” Hunter said. “We’ll put trinkets out on the tables, so everyone can come in and trade trinkets.”
She said any miscellaneous little items from pins to stickers and even buttons are perfect trinkets to trade, and her hope is that people are inspired to start their own trinket boxes and create a little whimsy in their own lives.
As for why she thinks people are drawn to trading trinkets, Hunter said it’s about community and nostalgia.
“You think about going to camp, where you would make bracelets with your name on it, or weave the little lanyard pieces together,” she said. “So I feel like it has a little bit of nostalgia to it, because in the 90s, what else were you gonna do? You just had to craft.”
The best part, she said, is that it’s accessible for everyone.
“It's such a great little community thing too, because adults, teenagers, kids, everyone can trade, it doesn't matter,” Hunter said. “It seems so silly, but once you do it, it's like, ‘oh my god, I need to save all my knick knacks so I can go trade them.’ ”
When she attended a Desert Goth Club trinket trade at Hotel McCoy, Hunter said she was surprised by the amount of people who showed up, and the connections that people made through trading.
“Everyone was trading, and it was long. Some people were there for five hours just trading trinkets,” Hunter said. “It was so much fun. I couldn't believe how much fun something as silly as trading knick knacks was.”
Darby Hunter, a local artist, drills holes into a trinket box she will hang at Golf N' Stuff, 6503 E Tanque Verde Rd. in Tucson, Ariz. on April 9, 2026. Hunter says she was inspired to create the box after seeing them in Phoenix. People can take a trinket and leave a trinket. Hunter says she wants to make more and hang them in other places around Tucson.
What she really loves, Hunter said, is encouraging people to be crafty and use their creativity.
“I know it's hard to be crafty when you don't own stuff to craft, right?,” she said. “So I do classes where I 3D print a figurine, and then I provide hundreds of things of paint, and I have a six foot table, buffet style, full of just embellishments, ribbons, bows, beads, buttons, sand, rocks, acorns, 3D printed books.”
Hunter said she tries to do events once a month, and that her craft nights usually draw between 10 and 35 people.
Her next event is April 25 from 12 to 3 p.m. at the Proper Collective on Speedway, 3400 E. Speedway Blvd.
“That one's creepy critters, so we got little two-and-a-half-inch tall figurines,” she said. “One's a cat in a clown outfit, another one's The Jersey Devil or something like that, it's a folklore creature. There's a bear with a TV head, there's a cat with mushrooms, little mythical, creepy things.”
