Last week was one of those "Senior Year" moments for me. It was my pledge class' last Bid Day. Every year during work week for my sorority, it so happens that I end up getting pulled into doing a large part of the decorations or costumes or, well, basically anything crafty and artistic (not that I mind - I love doing it!) This year one of my projects (among many others) was to make a new kite for our Rho Chis to carry from the Hogg Auditorium when they walk with all of the new members to the Theta House on Bid Day. I actually made two kites, but during rush the wooden letters I had painted for one were misplaced. Although I was pretty bummed about it, everyone seemed happy enough with just one new kite, so I decided to just perfect the one I had finished.
I've been going through a disposable camera fix lately, so here's a snapshot of me with the new Texas Theta kite courtesy of my fancy disposable:
My friend Meredith and I "kiting" our friend Anne, her sister Sarah, and the kite I made:
To paint the kite, I started with what I call "messy chevron" using my favorite acrylic paint, Liquitex. I did about three coats of this and let each coat dry before adding a new layer. Choosing the colors for the kite was tricky at first because I initially wanted to stay with the colors of our sorority. Our official colors are black and gold (sometimes yellow gets thrown into the mix as well), but I decided instead to add a little summer color with light blue with metallic gold and gold glitter. Thetas love their glitter.
Before lettering:
After lettering:
For the lettering, I used a small brush and black acrylic paint. After the first layer dried, I carefully went over the lettering one more time to make sure the black was opaque. Once that was finished drying, I added another gold accent by outlining the letters with a metallic gold Sharpie paint pen (oil based) to really make the letters pop!
What I used:
Final Product:
I brought in the black at the end when I did the lettering, which came out great against the light blue and gold.
Another fun thing we do at Theta for Bid Day is make yellow kite posters for each girl that are personalized and have their picture on them. This is probably my favorite part of Bid Day. I had to run to work during the end of the kite making, so I didn't get to take a picture of all of the beautiful kites when they were finished.
To give you an idea of what they look like, this is one of the kites from last year that I did:
This one was for a girl from my high school who went Theta! She actually has her own jewelry shop on Etsy called Duo Beads, and it's awesome. Y'all should really check it out.
Speaking of high school, this year we got three new Thetas from Lamar! Every year we take a group picture with everyone from LHS. Once a redskin, always a redskin.
Thanks for reading, y'all!
XO BK
