If you follow me on Instagram you may remember me saying I was in charge of this years girls camp for my church.  I am LDS or Mormon as many people know.  I don’t talk about my religion much, but it is something near and dear to my heart so I thought I would share a little about girls camp last week.  Every year the young Women, ages 12 to 18 have a girls camp where we go camping for a week.  This week is spent making crafts, swimming, bonding and learning more about the gospel.  I didn’t have to decorate the camp…. but, I kind of love doing stuff like this so I did add a few things to spice up the camp.

Girls camp theme

This year we decided to go with a Boho theme and instead of dream catchers we called them prayer catchers to tie in with the theme of the camp which was “ask in faith and then act.”

I cut this awesome dream catcher out with my machine to create this welcome to our tribe sign.

Since our theme for camp was “Ask in faith and then act,”  I, of course, had to make a sign that had that on it too!

Prayer catchers

As a craft for one of the days I taught everyone how to make prayer catchers and then we hung them all over the camp! They took about 2 hours to assemble and the girls loved putting them together and adding their personal touches with different fabrics.  We used 10″ embroidery hoops for the rings, jute string for the middle and we tore yards and yards of fabric 1″ thick.  We let each girl pick 20 to 25 strands of fabric for the tails.

 

Teepee signs and names

When the girls got to camp we had these teepee signs with their names hanging from them with their tent assignments.  Each group of girls set up their own tents painted their names and then decorated their teepees. (these are unfinished)

Painting their names

Painting their teepees

Tuck in treats

I forgot to take pictures of our tuck in treats but I thought I would include what we did in case someone else would like to use them.

• Monday Night: Tag- Faith shines brightest in the dark theme.  We gave them glow sticks and glow in the dark nail polish
• Tuesday Night: Tag- Young Women’s Values theme.  We tied fold over elastic around them to make hair elastics (I used this tutorial and printable)
• Wednesday Night: Tag- Don’t ask God to guide your footprints, if you are not willing to move your feet theme.  We gave them a foot lick a stick you can buy them here
• Thursday Night: We gave them wave rings, you can buy them here

Bracelets

I also find it helpful to do crafts that the girls will hang on to, rather than throw away a week after they get back home. Making bracelets was an easy craft that fit in with this goal. We had the girls assemble their own bracelets using jasper beads on one of the days. We attached little dream catcher charms to tie into our theme of asking in faith, then acting. The girls loved making these!  (We ordered large quantities from China in advance to help keep the cost down)

 

Girls camp was so much fun and I’m so glad I got to direct it. Bonding and building relationships with these girls was key, and I think we achieved that. Hopefully these ideas can help someone else in pursuit of girls camp activities!