This is the camp of Legends, but campers I am here to tell you that the most legendary beings at IGGPPCamp are YOU! In this craft, we’ll create a self portrait (either with or without a printed photo) from any craft supplies you want to use – this is a great opportunity to use your stash!

Supplies:

  • A piece of card
  • Any kind of craft supplies you want to use
  • A photo of yourself if you want
  • Scissors
  • Glue

Portraits of Legends Instructions:

First up, you want to decide your medium. Maybe you’ll paint, maybe free-embroider, maybe potato stamp, or use folded paper for a 3D effect. Basically everything I did was very improvised so I really want you to just let your imaginations run wild!

Grab your blank piece of card (or embroidery material, or canvas, etc…) and make a start. I had a nice square piece of printed card with forests and sky and triangles so I used that to represent a mountain and a tent. To make the tent, I took a triangular piece of card, cut a straight line partway up and then folded outward to make flaps. I cut it by eye, but you can be fancy and measure it if you want.

If you have a photo of yourself to put in, you can be sitting inside the tent or to the side, or even flying up high in the sky! I managed to find a photo of me sitting on a rock so I cut myself out and am sitting beside the tent. It kinda looks like I went camping to my alma mater, but never mind! I added in a couple more mountains and some “sun” and sky until I felt like the picture was full enough.

Have a fiddle around until you’re happy with the positioning of everything, and then you can get to sticking it down. I took parts away carefully and marked the useful corners with a pencil, though this isn’t foolproof and as soon as I moved after taking a photo I was suddenly unsure on how it had fit together at all!

At this point I decided I was nearly done – my patterned card is kinda busy so I didn’t think it needed much more, but you may decide differently! I outlined the tent with black sharpie just to make it pop and seem more foreground than the mishmash of triangular mountains. Keep going until you’re happy with it all!

For my final flourish, I added JimBob to represent all the great campers and friends we make at camp! He’s chilling in the tent, waiting to toast his marshmallows.

I hope you’re all really pleased with your artwork that you can now hang up in your blanket fort! You rocked it, legends!

Contributed by Katherine
Meet Katherine, aka Camper Alan-a-Dale! For her seventh IGGPPC camp – and her seventh camp ever – she’s bringing you a couple of crafts to enjoy during camp! Flashback to camps past with a fabled creature postcard craft, and create a design of the best legend – you! If you have any questions about it, you can find her most places online as @klff_.