So my daughter, Nina, is going to go to sleep-away camp for the first time at the end of June. I am so proud of her for making the decision to GO FOR IT! I want to make her experience the best it can be, so I am planning a series of special letters to sleep-away camp.
During all of the many (!) years that I went to camp, I think my very favorite thing was getting care packages. All of my letters home featured requests for food: from Grandma Pearl, her “famous” chocolate cake, gum and M&Ms and from mom, Pringles and Pixie Stix and squirt cheese with Ritz crackers. I clearly remember waiting for rest period when hopefully a box full of goodies would arrive.
Nina’s camp doesn’t allow any packages at all, which is disappointing for both of us! To make up for this, I thought I would send her some special notes and craft creations that might make her smile. Pinterest, of course, was my template for ideas. Some of the posts there include step-by-step instructions, which I followed as well as I could. Others were just photos which I attempted to recreate.
Since I had no blog at the time, I did not take notes on my experiences or photos as I went along, but I will try to do so with future projects.
Pocket letter craft
While obsessing over Pinterest pages, I learned that there is apparently a snail-mail movement out there that specializes in making special crafts for pen pals. Pocket letters are one of these crafts. They are generally made up of 9 tiny notes or flat gifts that are stored in a plastic pocket protector. Usually the gifts include tea bags (not sure why exactly), but that doesn’t work for my purposes; the only “gifts” I included for Nina were the owl sticker and the sheet of pearl embellishments. The piece that says “open” has a little note inside. This was my first shot at creating a pocket letter…I think it came out pretty good!
(Sorry…I know the photos are not great, but it the glare makes things complicated)
chalk pen craft
I LOVE the chalk pen!
Now that these miracles have been invented, I no longer have to suffer the dusty feel of chalk on my fingers, nor must I endure the awful screeching noise that chalk makes. Therefore, during the last year or so, I have filled my kitchen with all sorts of black boards (calendars, menus for the week, lists of groceries and after school activities, notes, etc. are all featured on these boards ).
Many people have blogged about sending letters from a pet to children at sleep-away camp. It is pretty weird, but I decided to do a take on this theme using black card stock and chalk pens. I love the result!
I just discovered another creative way to use chalk pens! I wanted to make fireworks for a July 4th craft, but I didn’t really feel like breaking out the paint (although there are some really awesome looking tutorials on how to paint fireworks on Pinterest!). Instead, I grabbed my faves, the liquid chalk pens!
Here’s what I did: I made big blobs of different colored ink on a piece of black card stock. Then I used the rounded edge of a paper clip (I am sure there’s a better tool somewhere out there!) to swish the liquid around until I liked the shape. Once the ink was dry, I used alphabet stickers for the message.
I am really happy with the way it turned out…except the lower right where the writing looks less than perfect. I blame that on the pen! Its annoying that you can’t trust the ink to consistently come out the way you want it to!
Puzzles (not really a craft)
When researching fun things to send to camp, I found puzzles and codes. They were a little bit time consuming, but not so tough to make while you’re binging a good TV show on the couch with a lap desk (which is how I create most of my crafts).
I am going to send Nina a few copies of each in case other kids want to give them a go.
Doodles
Inspired yet again by Pinterest, this time (I think) the teenage set, I decided to do a doodle page:
Easy (if not fancy) washi tape projects
On Being Brave
This is one of the first projects I made for Nina’s sleep-away camp collection. I know its pretty amateurish, but I don’t really care…its the sentiment that counts. I think I am going to hide it away in her luggage rather than snail mail it so that Nina will find it when she is unpacking.
Framed Alphabet letter washi tape project
Since I didn’t yet have a die cut machine (I just bought a mini one and it arrived this morning!!!), I had to do this project the old fashioned way. I drew a letter N on a piece of card stock, cut out the inside, and then used a black market to outline. I places the washi tape on a second piece of card stock that was the same size. Then I glued the two pages together. On the back I wrote the words to the song “Are you ready for the summer?” and a short note .
Popsicle washi tape project
This one was super simple and I think its really cute. I just cut out the shape of a popsicle, decorated with washi, and taped half of a craft stick to the bottom. On the back is a short note for my girl.
Rainbow washi tape project
Again, this was a super easy craft that definitely looks homemade and not so professional, but again, so what! For this one, I placed the washi on the card stock first to make sure I would get in all of the colors that I wanted. Then I outlined the rainbow and hearts in pencil, cut and pasted the shapes onto some blue paper with clouds.
I hope you enjoyed looking at my crafty letters to sleep-away camp. To read more camp blogs, please check out:
