Festival totems are a huge staple in the festival community. They work as a way for members of a squad to find each other throughout the grounds. They are a form of self-expression and allow others to connect with each other. I made my first totem for EDC 2017 and 2018.
This was seriously so fun to make and connect with so many Arizona ravers while at EDC Las Vegas. With Freaky Deaky around the corner, I knew I had to make a totem to connect with my vibe tribe. Watch me struggle to make it in this week’s video:
For the design of the totem, I decided to go with one side be branded Vibe With Ade with the logo and some broken CDs.
For the other side I opted to quote a song from one of my favorite artists, Chris Lake, as he’ll be playing at Freaky Deaky.
In total, the totem cost about $40 to make, which doesn’t include lights (if I were to have ordered some could have been around $5-$10). My biggest tip for the PVC pipe is to make it a T-Shape to make any poster board more stable. Go to your local Home Depot or Lowe’s and get a 10 ft PVC pipe (ours is 3/4 wide) and have them cut it into two 4 ft poles and two 1 ft poles. Then get a t-shaped connector so you can connect the two 1 ft poles on the left and right side and connect one 4 ft pole to be the main pole in the middle. Then you’ll get a circular connector that will connect the two 4 ft poles together. This makes transporting the totem in a car much easier. Once we get to Houston, we’ll use zip ties to secure the poster boards to the PVC.
I got the poster board from Joann’s and tape for the checkered print. Ordered the CDs off Amazon. The icons and logos were made at Kinko’s. Then used E6000 glue to put it all together.
I hope you found this tutorial helpful!
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