Our Project Reveal At "Give Kids The World"!

Hiya! Remember when I mentioned this last month?

Our friend Arielle is a theme park designer, and she does some really cool volunteer work, like this mystery project. And since the big grand opening was a few weeks ago, now I get to show you what it is, and what we did!

The cave tunnel is at Give Kids The World, the free charity resort for children with life-threatening illnesses. They have a little train ride there called the JJ Express, which recently got a Jurassic themed makeover. The cave tunnel was turned into an archeological dig, complete with faux dinosaur bones and - here's where we come in - cave paintings.


A quick peek at the train ride from GKTW's Facebook page.

The cave paintings needed to look like real cave paintings, so something like this:

... but they also needed to be paintings of dinosaurs.

(Don't come for me, historians, GKTW is a place of wonder and whimsy, aight? :p)

The three of us were given free rein on the designs, but that much responsibility freaked us out, ha. So thankfully one of the project directors e-mailed some sketches to use. We took the sketches, projected them onto the walls, and arranged a story scene.

We traced everything with chalk, then filled in with extras like footprints and hand prints.

Arielle brought 3 different paint colors: we used one for the fire, one for the people, and one for the dinos.

The final step - in order to age it a few thousand years - was a good sanding with sanding sponges. This was my favorite part, it really brought the paintings to life.

Our main scene has a Story Teller beside the fire, telling a ring of children about the dinosaurs of old. Above them, in the flickers of firelight, are a Brontosaurus with her baby and a Triceratops and T-rex having a friendly chat:

We made up a few more things for further down the wall, my favorite is the pterodactyl:

::pterodactyl screech::

Now here's the magical part: this entire cave wall is wired with fiber optics. And by a delightful random happenstance, we placed our fire painting just where it looks like the lights are coming out of the fire and surrounding the dinosaurs:

 
How cool is that?! It's like the fire is conjuring the dinosaurs with pixie dust! The fiber optics are hard to see in bright light, so we didn't plan this; we only noticed when we stepped back to take final photos.

Here, you need video for the full effect:

OoooOOoooh.

Later more teams came in to finish dressing the tunnel scene with extra props, bones, and equipment. Arielle was there at the grand opening (we were invited, too, but couldn't make it) and took some photos for us:

I like how they framed the main scene with the rope!

::internal flailing::

Y'all. We did that! I mean, at least, we helped. Ahhh, there's that happy glow.

It's been over a month, but I'm still a little starstruck that John and I got to work on an attraction at Give Kids The World. They do so much good, and spread so much love to folks who need it. I'm a fan. (If you're not familiar with GKTW, go take a look around their website.) I do hope we get to do more for them in the future.

Well that's it for me, so happy Friday, bots & babes! I hope this made you smile, or at least put an amazing new charity on your radar. Now tell me, what's the best thing you ever did volunteering? Or the most unusual? Do you have any fun stories? Hit me up in the comments, I'd love to hear what y'all have done and recommend.