Wax Hands

Today, I had the pleasure of helping people create wax forms of their hands. Party Vision, our vendor, describes the process as follows:

Your wax sculpture is made by dipping your hand in our warm melted wax several times. The casting is cooled and removed from your hand. We then add your choice of colors. A variety of items are available which can be held while dipping to add to your creation.

Though I personally do not care for the things, they were quite popular as evidenced by a line the entire time that had a thirty plus minute wait time.

Some important lessons today. Never underestimate the power of the strange. Who knows what students will like, unless you ask them -- a key to successful student activities programming. Also, when going for quantity as we often do, be sure to check with your vendor about ways to speed up the novietly. For example students today could choose to dip their hands with flowers and/or frogs. Though nice, the level of difficulty to attach extra things slowed the process down.

Also, be sure to always put on the posters for these types of events a line about the event being for valid students only. This will avoid other groups from taking advanatge of the event and provide a level of enforcement if a confrontation over the "free" nature of event arises. If necessary, ask students for their ID and if offering multiple novilities have a check in station for IDs that will provide tickets to the novilities. Faculty, staff, and others could then purchase these tickets.


Lastly, ask the vendor ahead of time if there are ways to personalize the product. Today we also offered Pucker Powder, colored sugar in a tube. It would have been nice to have our logo on the tube so that people could know who provided them with the "free" pucker powder. This points to a large issue of on-site marketing which we do not do a good job at.