Drake Relays Street Painting

Today a few staff members from Children's Cancer Connection went out into the community to help celebrate this year's Drake Relays by participating in the first ever Drake Relays Downtown Streeting Painting. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and over 40 teams came out to support the event.

Our Task: To create an awesome 4 x 4 square on Court Avenue outside of Spaghetti Works that captured the essence of Children's Cancer Connection while supporting the 2010 Drake Relays.

Our Team: While our task was great, an expert team helped to lead the way to the finish line. Now, let's meet the players:

• Emily Beckmann, Official Design Sketcher and Color Coordinator
• Meridith Sayler, Trim Fixer Extraordinaire and Co-Professional Paint Mixer
• Mark Slocum, Coffee Connoisseur and Logo Outlining Specialist
• Tiffany K. Spinner, Design Generator and Bubble Letter Creator
• Cindy Stuedemann, Co-Professional Paint Mixer and Positive Thinking Captain

Theme: The theme for our square was based off of the Drake Relays theme this year, "Drake Relays 101." We decided that we definitely wanted to get our new logo and motto (The entire family. The entire journey) out there, while adding a little Drake flare. Therefore, we painted our logo alongside a few lanes of the Drake track with three Drake hurdles. We tied Children's Cancer Connection into the Drake Relays theme by adding our tagline for the square, "Helping families...one hurdle at a time!"

Challenges: We overcame a few a few "hurdles" of our own...

1. The wind and blowing debris - Ok...so it was a few pieces of grass and leave here or there...
2. Distraction - All of the other squares looked awesome! It was fun to go and look around at all of the different ideas that people had come up with.
3. Meatball the Bulldog - He's soo cute! It's really hard not to want to watch him walk around in his little Drake jersey and crown! Okay, so he was more of a distraction really...
4. Needing the "Drake blue" color - Thanks to our awesome friends at the Downtown Neighborhood Association and from a friendly ask from Mark, we overcame this obstacle and obtained a little "Drake blue" for our square.

Overall, the day was a success and all of the street paintings turned out really well. While we didn't come home with the top prize, our team assures you that our square "seriously rocks." So now you're probably saying, "Show us your square already!" Here goes nothing:

Starting off the day with a blank slate and ready to paint!

Our Street Painting Team working on the beginning stages of the new logo and background colors!

This is Meatball. He's this year's Drake Bulldog and he is also a reason that we got distracted for a few moments, but don't worry we got right back to work to make our beau-ti-ful square happen!




















Drumroll please....and this is the finished product! Our square (in all its glory) is located on Court Avenue right outside of Spaghetti Works in downtown Des Moines. Make sure that stop by and admire it next time you are downtown!