ATCO Craft Night

One of the other weekly projects that Alpha Phi Omega does with ATCO is Craft Night every Tuesday at Rollerbowl. There is a group of five ladies who get together with three or four volunteers to make crafts and do other activities. This is a project that is fun and easygoing - as long as you have some semblance of creativity, you can help brainstorm ideas and join in the craft-making extravaganza.

At Rollerbowl, ATCO has plastic containers filled to the brim with colorful paper, beads of all colors and shapes, wire, paint, stickers, glitter and anything else you could possibly need. The main thing for volunteers to do is to pick a project to do and pull the supplies out so everyone can work on it. Most of the time the craft ladies are able to independently do the work, but volunteers are there to help if needed.

If there are extra supplies, volunteers are able to join in the fun and make their own crafts as well. I have a green piggy bank with jewels, a key chain that was made for me by one of my ATCO ladies, a tie-dyed shirt that I love and other knick-knacks around my apartment.

Tie-dying shirts was probably one of my favorite projects to work on. For this craft, we went to Passionworks Studio and set up the supplies there because we did not want to get dye and such all over the bowling alley. We arranged to have a couple extra volunteers at the project and a few more ATCO ladies came to tie-dye (some of them do not appreciate the amount of noise at Rollerbowl). We all got to hang out, tie-dye and talk. The ladies were sharing their techniques while we got everything together and helped them dye their shirts individually. Jeff Bierlein who runs most of the ATCO programs came as well and took the shirts until they could dry and returned them the next week.


ATCO Craft Night is a good opportunity to be creative and is mainly a bonding experience and an easy way to socialize for an hour every Tuesday afternoon.