Back to summer camp!! Company picnic and a great reason to screen print!
I love summer camp. I went to a great one in the San Juan Islands for 5 summers as a kid, and I have great memories and friends from there and will always appreciate those happy, fun, carefree times. I'm so grateful for the experience.
So, I have some nostalgia about summer camp (increased by movies like The Parent Trap, Wet Hot American Summer, and Moonrise Kingdom, and hipster culture!), and this year I suggested a summer camp theme for our company picnic.
The summer picnic committee was totally on board and all the team and subcommittees jumped on ideas for bringing the best of summer camp to our fellow employees and their families for an afternoon. We had wood cookie name tag decorating, a tie dye station, camp counselor names, the Announcement Song, a water balloon melee, and more and more and more. Everyone got so into it!
Another idea I had was for a name for this pretend "camp" and a logo to go with--our company is called Mackenzie, so the name was Camp Mackenzie and I found the perfect reason to use my screen printing kit again! We did a logo on the front and "STAFF" on the back for the committee members ("camp counselors"), on vintage-ey ringer tees. (Seriously, if you haven't seen Wet Hot American Summer, you must. Pretty sure Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper would have worn shirts just like these.)
The inspiration (Wet Hot American Summer):
The tug-of-war matches were particularly epic. Husband's team was undefeated.
A few of the committee got together and built a stick sign for the camp--it says CAMP backwards and MACKENZIE with a flag in front!
The inspiration (Moonrise Kingdom):
Of course we had whistles and wood cookie nametags we decorated, and our "camp director" (committee chair) had a megaphone. Oh, and the wood cookies--three of us collected our Christmas trees last year and one very helpful committee member cut them into disks and drilled holes for everyone--for our more than 220 attendees!
We had so much fun acting like kids and getting the whole company into the spirit!
Oh, I should say on the shirts--the emulsion I got more than 2 years ago in my screen printing kit was old, so instead of the standard emulsion method for getting the design, we used contact paper and cut with an exacto knife, then stuck the contact paper to the screens. It actually worked out great! We made 16 shirts, so it would have been rough to do iron-on letters or stenciling individually. We did the fronts one day after work, and the backs another!
It was so great being back at camp for a day--and being a counselor and in charge! ;)
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