To kick off the holiday season, ten Her Campus UVic members signed up for a “Winter Team Building Workshop,” excited to do a cute festive craft. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to unwind during finals week and spend time with friends. We selected a Saturday night “Penguin Mug Class,” thinking it’d be a chill activity. Â
You can imagine the shock on our faces when we showed up to the art studio to paint a penguin mug, just to find a ball of wet clay and a rolling pin. Instead of a self-guided painting session, we found ourselves crafting the mugs from raw materials.Â
The start of the workshop was straight out of a sitcom Christmas episode. The studio was hard to find, so only half of us were there at 6:00 PM. Our instructor—bless her heart—was also a little confused about what we were doing, but wasted no time getting started. She began rapidly explaining steps to our semi-barren table, but one of our amazing execs, Jess L., started the process for the girls who hadn’t arrived so they’d be caught up when they arrived.
Stress aside, we couldn’t help but laugh at the organized chaos. We walked in expecting a chill painting session but found ourselves smacking cold clay and “scratch and slipping” every individual piece. I’ll admit, I loved that each mug was unique, instead of all of us working on a perfect pre-made mug. We had so much fun trying very hard (and often failing) to make our penguins actually resemble real penguins, but it was worth it.
The artistic process got even more exciting when our instructor pulled out the glaze. I didn’t know it was possible to glaze wet clay, but here we were, making mugs from start to finish in two and a half hours. Everyone took creative liberties when painting their penguin. We had girls painting polka dots, flowers, snowflakes and featuring an amazingly funky colour scheme. Our penguins looked like they were born in Club Penguin, not the South Pole.Â
Clay penguin-gate was an awesome team bonding event. We had a blast navigating the intricate instructions with little to no experience. It’s not for the weak, but with a positive attitude, it’s a super fun way to connect with friends, colleagues, or clubs. We left the art studio with a very fun penguin mug, and an even better story.
