Sad News & Camp Shirt Idea...

I had an interesting day yesterday. After about 3 1/2 years of serving in the YW presidency I was released. To say the least it was an incredibly sad day. The YW I worked with changed my life. The worst part was seeing the YWs sad little faces. I thought I was going to be fine but it was harder than expected. I'm a little sensitive about it right now so be nice! "When one door closes another one opens" right?? I look forward to another door opening but will look back on my past with the YW with a smile :)

Where does that leave our service project? After much prayer and thought I'm still going to continue with this project. I feel this is exactly what my Heavenly Father wants me to be doing...so I'm going to do it :) I will still be sending ideas and today I am going to work on some youtube tutorials for the patterns I sent out. I have also had some women in my ward with YW daughters and activity day aged daughters wanting to be included (my daughter turns 12 this
year). I'm going to meet with them once a month to teach them how to crochet and knit.

Now onto what this post was originally about....t-shirts for camp. This is an idea we used last year....

Last year at camp we were told we weren't allowed to have ward camp shirts. They were really focused on unity and thought ward shirts wouldn't help with that. Well we listened and just about every other ward had ward shirts. Our YW were not happy. I think there must have been some sort of mistake in the communication? The girls were understandably disappointed. That year the stake didn't do t-shirts either. Major bummer. So with that experience in mind we decided we are doing shirts this year regardless if the stake did them or not. The shirts will work perfectly when we are together as a ward. This is our schedule:

TUESDAY.........We're all in this together as individuals. (We are all in this together. I am an individual and bring value to the whole.)



WEDNESDAY...We're all in this together as a ward. (We are all in this together as a ward and together we are strong.)


THURSDAY.......We're all in this together as a stake. (We are all in this together as a stake and together we are one in purpose.)


FRIDAY............We're all in this together as Children of God. (We can share the Gospel and bring lambs into the fold.)

The YW will receive their shirts on Wednesday. Our ward is on a tight budget and we weren't sure we could afford printed t-shirts. So we came up with an idea. We waited to buy the shirts until they went on sale at Michaels. Then we did this...

LOL! So your thinking (or maybe you aren't) how did you do this? It was so easy and can I say FREE! Everything I did to this shirt is with supplies I already had in my house. This shirt took no talent what-so-ever because I have NONE! I grabbed some contact paper and cut out the paper dolls on my cricut. Then stick the contact paper to the shirt and used acrylic paint to paint the people and hair. The contact paper was wonderful. The paint didn't bleed at all and I could reuse the stencil a few times.

We kind of wanted to keep with the stake camp theme of WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER but still let the girls know of their worth as individuals. Each shirt is slightly different in as the girl in the center will resemble the owner of the shirt.


You may be thinking won't the paint wash off? The answer is no! My friend Wendy assured me it wouldn't and I accidentally washed one and it still looks great. One tip is to make sure to get plenty of paint on. After you wash the shirt it slightly fades but if you do enough paint you won't be able to tell! The back of the shirt will say this in big letters.....

End price for this shirt is $2.50 and that was just for the shirt! I think the possibilities are endless with this idea. It would be a wonderful way to decorate team shirts. Around here for sports the girls just get a t-shirt with a logo on the front. This year for my daughter's volleyball shirt I put BEACHELL on the back and her favorite number all for free! Can't beat that!