In the summer of 2014 we were looking for an old camper to turn into a mobile art studio. We were having fun teaching art to both kids and adults and thought that a mobile art studio would be great to take to art shows and events.
We found our first camper on Craigslist, at a perfect price! She was a 1965 Shasta Banner, in great condition. Matter of fact, she was in too good of a condition to tear apart! After we purchased the camper and brought her home, we started to research vintage campers and joined a couple forums on the subject. The overwhelming response was to not tear apart a camper that is in near mint condition. Instead, we sold the camper to someone who could appreciate her for what she was…a beautiful vintage 1965 Shasta Banner! To this day, we love that camper. She was beautiful and we were lucky to have had her for that short period…but we had our hearts set on having a mobile art studio. We needed a camper that could be completely gutted.
Enter Camper #2. A 1955 Duro, made right here in Michigan and boy, was that thing ugly! The outside was all dented and dinged up! It was so ugly, it was almost cute…and was screaming to be gutted! That is exactly what we did. The problem was, the more we tore into it, the more we realized how rotted it really was! Even the wooden framework would need to be replaced. So, Daren completely demolished the whole thing. He couldn’t salvage much. At first, he tried to save the metal siding, at least to use as a template to re-build. We came to the conclusion, that if we have to rebuild the camper from scratch, why not build it into something we really want. Anything we want, in our style! And so the Pirate Ship Camper idea was born!
Creating the Pirate Ship Camper has been a passion of ours for the past 4 years. We’ve dreamt about it, talked about it, drawn it out, rendered it, created a model of it… and NOW it’s time to build it! Stay tuned…this is going to be exciting!
Camper #1 – 1965 Shasta Banner
Camper #2 – 1955 Duro
