Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Heart of the Hills

Good afternoon, blogging world!



So yesterday was opening day for the camp I spent ten summers of my life going to, and it is breaking my heart not being there. There is so much excitement and happiness going around, I can practically feel the camp magic when I think about it. In honor of opening day, I thought I would share some of the things I painted for a camper during first term and a few other little things. The snapshot above was actually from last year's opening day! Can you imagine what people must have thought driving past us? Like, "Who are these people jumping up and down on the side of a highway with paint all over themselves?" Well, it's a camp thing.

the wonderful sixteen year olds from last summer
There is no way to sum up all of the wonderful stories and experiences I had at the Heart in just one blog post. In fact, if I were to even try to do that it would probably end up being more like a novel, but thought I would share some artwork I did for a camp friend!

all 22 Andromeda canvases! 
One of the biggest parts of camp is war canoe. This year I was asked to paint canvases for a first term camper named Phoebe for her war canoe gifts! I will admit, I was a little nervous to make 22 identical canvases, but I wanted to create something that the girls would love. Because I was a camper and in war canoe myself, I was well aware of how special the moment is when you get your first war canoe shirt and how unbelievably awesome it feels to wear it around camp. Those memories inspired my design for Phoebe's canvases.

Phoebe with her canvases! You can see the can canoe shirt as well.

The gifts are supposed to be very special, and they are given out during a devotional with your team after the practice race. I really wanted to make them special since it was Phoebe's last year of camp, so I decided that for each canvas, I would paint it exactly like their war canoe shirt. Shawnee War Canoe is called "Andromeda" and so on top of the design of the tshirt, I decided to do "Andromeda" in gold script. 

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing twenty twoooo

close up of the Andromeda canvas



Meghan was my special delivery helper for the order! Can't thank you enough!!
Although I wasn't a Shawnee, it brought me an insane amount of joy to have been able to paint these canvases.  I hope all of you first term Shawnee War Canoe girls love them! Congratulations on winning the race! 

ps flyers
(I had to slip a picture of Pawnee War Canoe, too! Just for good measure. Boom boom boom boom xo)

Love love love,
Bethany

4 comments:

  1. I am a Heart camper from many summers ago. The memories never fade, and summers always have a special, sweet sadness. I would not trade those memories for anything..Debbie

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Bethany!
    My daughter's 1st was your last. Grace is a Shawnee and was a last-year Junior when she came the 1st time. (You may remember her as the girl with food allergies, which is what kept her away so many years and she was one of the top ten Juniors.) Anyway, she tried out for War Canoe last year (2nd yr of camp) but didn't make the cut, so she worked very hard this year and, voila! Her determination paid off. So now I have to help her figure out what to give her fellow War Canoers. Help!!! Suggestions? I confess I'm looking for affordable. Perhaps we'll go all-out her last year @ the Heart, but not this year! (And do we really need 22 of them?!)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi! Yes, I remember Grace- we bonded over our gluten allergy! She was so deserving of being named a top ten Junior. She always had a great attitude! I am happy to hear she made war canoe. That is such a big accomplishment at camp! Being a part of war canoe was one of my favorite memories of camp. As far as gifts go, you don't have to break the bank. And luckily you don't need 22! They had 22 girls on SWC that year, but now I believe it's 14/15 + 2 sponsors. My mom and I definitely followed the same approach about going all out (or at least our definition of all out!) for my last year, but there are plenty of crafty options that are still cute. Something I always appreciated was painted picture frames with our war canoe songs written on them. For SWC, it would be so cute to do a gold picture frame (Michaels has some wooden ones for $1 each!) with a little green star and a white "R" written on it or "SWC 2014". If you want to brainstorm more, email me at bkraftydesigns@yahoo.com, and I will send you my phone number so we can chat.

      Delete
  3. Great write-up, I am a big believer in commenting on blogs to inform the blog writers know that they’ve added something worthwhile to the world wide web!..
    verse for the day

    ReplyDelete