Glitter, Puff Paint, Ribbon, Oh My!

During my transition from college life to real life, I've also been trying to find my place in my sorority life. I was extremely involved as a collegian and i wouldn't expect less of me as an alumnae. Recruitment happen to be coming up and since crafting has been one of the few things to keep me sane post school, i decided to see what i could do to help out.

Now for those who never gone through formal recruitment or heard of it, ill break it down a little. At my university, Fraternity and Sorority life is not like you see in movies or hear about in the south. We don't have houses so our recruitment process takes place in out student commons. On Bid Day (the last day, when women choose where they will join) all chapters are in one room. Now instead of clapping and yelling each time a women "walks", we use noise makers to show our excitement. Each organization has a different noise maker so when a woman chooses your chapter you shake your noise maker and so on for each org. Our first year we used Tic Tacs, Second Year was kinda like a paddle ball with two beads that you spun to make noise, and this year i was handed empty medicine bottles wrapped in red felt.

Heres what they looked like when i got them:

Now my job, in the words of Tim Gunn, was to Make it work! So i went to my local craft store (Ben Franklin), A sorority woman's favorite place to shop and searched for the answers. I ended up buying some black and white glitter, black and white decorative ribbon, and finding some red and black confetti stars, and puff paint at home in my craft drawer.

The First step was to make them not look like medicine bottles. I made a simple wash of mainly glue with some very little water to attach glitter to the tops. I combined the white and black glitter in a small bowl and sprinkled in the confetti starts. Next you take a paint brush and paint the glue onto the tops. Then you sprinkle the glitter on.

Note: When using glitter make sure you put something under it (Newspaper as you see here) this eliminates the hard process of cleaning it up because it sticks everywhere!!

Close Up of Finished Lids

After i let them all dry i took cute sayings like "Bid Day 2010", "Alpha Omicron Pi", "Rho Beta", "Exceed the Expectation", and wrote them on the side of the lids. Similar sayings relating to our history, chapter, and ideals were written with puff paint on the velvet. The 4 different types of ribbon i got (on sale might i add) was used to add bows and more decoration. Attach ribbon with hot glue for the added touch. Here of some of the final products.

Obviously you can tell that red, black, and white are the colors we use. Cardinal is our true color. The panda is our "unofficial" mascot. You can also see my attempt at a ruby (our jewel) on one.

I wish i would have taken more pictures of the ones that were my individual favorites. I wanted them to be cute but also reminders of what we stand for. My ultimate favorite said "Character, Dignity, Scholarship, and College Loyalty" which you will find in the object of our Fraternity and then in a close second was the one with our founders names.

Its my hopes that as they shake them in excitement to except these new women into our sisterhood that they are reminded of our mission. If they pass them out to our new members i hope as they learn and grow with in the chapter they will see these sayings, names, and people again, and build memories upon that. Once finished decorating and all paint and hot glue is dried, add you noise makers (in this case beans were the loudest) and you have your perfect Bid Day Noise Maker!