I am not the craftiest person though I love doing them. I can crochet, quilt, decoupage and even paint (of a sorts) but coming up with craft ideas isn’t easy. And when it comes to camp, it is even harder. After all, we have never met, so I don’t know your level of comfort with crafts.
The questions to ask:
Do your campers like doing crafts?
What types of crafts do your campers like?
What type of space, time, funds will your campers have access to?
Do you have a parent capable of helping with the crafts? Maybe even taking care of it?
Depending on the answers you have to these questions will help you in deciding what to do.
Crafts are intended to be a fun way for each camper to make a moment or souvenir of their camp time in a meaningful way. We hope the crafts might go home with each camper and be a reminder of the wonderful time they had at camp, the friends and memories they made as well as what they might have learned about their faith. Those are some big expectations but they can be easily met – again – depending on how much time and money you want to devote to crafts.
With this in mind, along with our badges, here are some ideas.
Again, our badges are:
-Outdoor Adventure Badge
-American Catholic History Badge
-Computers – St. Isidore
-Missions – St. Francis Xavier
Each badge has a ‘crafty’ component such as making a sign or spiritual bouquet. Feel free to make those your craft time and nothing more.
If you want to have an additional craft time you could make something to remember our camp theme. Hope In the Church.
-An anchor has long been an image of hope as Christ is our hope and we need to remain anchored in Him.
Wooden anchors can be ordered from Oriental Trading or Amazon and also found at Wal-Mart and some dollar stores. These could be painted and illustrated with a scripture.
They could also be used to collect the signatures of everyone attending, to take home as a moment of who was at camp.
-Our Lady of Hope (Our Lady of Pontmain), who appeared at Pontmain, France on 17 January 1871.
A lesser known apparition as compared to Our Lady of Lourdes but she was approved by Pope Pius XI in the 1930’s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Pontmain. Introduce her to our campers and make a craft with her in min
Holy Heroes has a free download of her. You could print these out to be decoupaged or glued to a wooden sign, a candle or mason jar vase. You can even decoupage a plate:
Decoupage a Plate: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/diy-decoupage-plates-4160446
Get your image from Holy Heroes here:
https://blog.holyheroes.com/our-lady-color-by-number-4
-T-Shirt
Making a personalized shirt has always been a favorite of campers. You could ask each camper to bring a white t-shirt from home or provide them as a part of the cost of camp.
There are several techniques for decorating shirts, pick the easiest for you:
The image at the top was made using a sharpie marker and rubbing alcohol technique:
https://www.marthastewart.com/892787/sharpie-tie-dye-t-shirt
Regular tie-dye:
https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/how-to-tie-dye-1245650
Reverse dye a shirt with bleach?
https://www.clorox.com/learn/how-to-bleach-tie-dye-patterns
Painting shirts:
And you can do a combination of tie-dye with markers:
If someone has a cricut machine or similar, you might design a camp t-shirt working off an anchor theme, Our Lady of Hope, or something specific to your parish or diocese.
Here’s a link the official jubilee Year of Hope from the Vatican if you would like to incorporate that in some way:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2022-06/official-logo-of-jubilee-year-unveiled.html
When it comes to crafts, we are firm believers in subsidiarity!
Are you familiar with the Catholic teaching on subsidiarity? From Catholic Answers we have,
“Subsidiarity is the principle, formulated by the Catholic Church, that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority rather than by a higher and more distant one, whenever possible.”
In other words, you are closest to your families and campers. YOU are the competent authority. You know what they can handle, along with yourself. You know what resources you have and what you don’t.
We are here with some ideas but we don’t have all of them. When it comes to crafts, especially, don’t stress about what you do or don’t do. We want everyone to have a good time at camp, even (especially?) the adults!
