academie: We don't need no stinkin' badges (or do we?)

[Edvard Gayer]

Byran, you sneak, you beat me to the punch by five minutes.  :)

Now that the badge has passed, there's nothing stopping us from displaying 
it as much, and in as many different ways, as we want.  The thing we need to 
figure out is what to do next.

Baldrics -- Back at NBD, we instituted a policy where the person "in charge" 
would wear a blue Academie baldric.  This is used by instructors in 
classroom situations, and by dance masters/mistresses who are running Balls. 
  Currently, we only have three in active circulation... one with Tahira, 
one with me, and I believe one with Victoria.  (The fourth one was given to 
Amalric and Caia at 20th Year).  They're easy to make -- the catch is 
getting the badge embroidered on it.  Victoria handled that for us before 
NBD (thanks again!) and she has a program for her embroidery machine.  If 
anyone else has a machine, they might want to check with her to see if the 
program might be compatable.

Constanza and I talked during our drive down to Juniversity about how else 
we might display our badge.  One idea was to make favors: something approx 
5" wide that would hang from your belt.   It would be Atlantian blue, with 
white trim, featuring our Spike-and-Dance logo.  I talked briefly with 
Master Herveus' wife at the last LoI meeting -- she makes woven belts and 
favors -- and if memory serves, she quoted me prices in the $20-$25 range.  
A tad expensive, but remember that the price is mostly time and labor.  They 
take quite a while to make by hand.  If we wanted a dozen, she could deliver 
them by Twelfth Night.  We can also look into making our own, they would be 
similar to the baldrics only smaller, but would require embroidery, cross 
stitching, or some other means to put Spike and the dance on it.  (On a 
tangent, does anyone have a decent cross-stitch program that could make a 
pattern from the graphic on the Academie site?)

There are many other ways to display the badge -- things like brooches and 
cloaks come to mind.  We might even want to make a pennant, sometihng that 
we can hang in our classroom at Universities, or something we could march 
behind in case we ever decided to troop into someone's court.  There are 
no-doubt many other ideas out there.

Anyway, if you have any ideas, please toss them out so we can attempt to get 
our hands around how we can use this new bit of "spiff" to our best 
advantage.  Using our heraldry will identify us as members, and will also 
likely serve as a recruitment tool.  Remember, we *are* the largest, 
fastest-growing, and most active guild in Atlantia, we should take pride in 
that and be proud to "strut our stuff" in public.  :)

-V

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