With Spring Quarter in full swing and formal season quickly approaching, you may find yourself tasked with painting a cooler in the near future. This Greek life tradition asks the invitee to design, paint, fill and gift a drink cooler to the fraternity member who invited them. You can even paint it together with your date to get you both excited for the weekend! But as someone who loves any excuse to make an art project exponentially more ambitious than it needs to be, I ate this tradition up last year and refused to let my boyfriend touch the cooler. I fully committed to the process and learned all the tricks of the trade so that you don’t have to. Here are the four things you should know before picking up a paintbrush:
- Spackle, sand, prime
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Original photo by Ciara Murphy -
As with most things, a great cooler starts with the proper base. To get your beautiful artwork to lay flat, not chip off and be easier to paint, you’ll need to fill in all those grooves with spackle. Once that dries, go ham with the sandpaper. Grind the dried spackle down to lay flush with the plastic, also sanding the plastic itself to rough up the base and give your primer something to hold on to. After what feels like an eternity of sanding (if you think you’re done, you’re not — keep going) use a spray primer to make the cooler a blank white canvas.
- Don’t Make Things Harder For Yourself — It’s Ok To Trace
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Original photo by Ciara Murphy -
There is no shame in tracing or copying here. It’ll make the whole process way faster and easier and save you a massive headache. So swallow your pride and get Googling. I even superimposed multiple images onto one another to make the designs more personalized to my date and things about him! (Shockingly, I scoured the Internet and couldn’t find a single image of Toothless the dragon wearing a Domino’s pizza hat).
- Get Together And Paint With Friends!
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Original photo by Ciara Murphy -
Last year my friends and I all got together at night and painted our coolers in each other’s dorms. It was a really fun way to catch up and have a break from our hectic schedules while also doing something fun and creative. We’d listen to music, eat dinner, talk about our days, bounce ideas off each other, share supplies and just have a silly little time.
- Don’t Cut Corners On The Sealant — You’ll Regret It If You Do!
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Original photo by Ciara Murphy -
I promise you don’t want to skip the final step: sealant. Once you’ve finished painting, make sure to protect all your hard work with a couple of coats of spray sealant. This will stop your cooler from immediately chipping, peeling or scratching. But remember, damage is inevitable and all a part of the formal experience. I know it can be hard to watch all of your hard work take a beating, so make sure to be mentally prepared for that. Also, don’t be afraid to actually use the cooler you put so much hard work into!
At the end of the day, the most important thing about this silly little tradition is the thought and effort you put into it. No matter your artistic abilities (or lack thereof), your date will love it! Just make sure you’re having fun and don’t stress yourself out too much; I promise it’s not that deep! Although I loved completely throwing myself into the art project last year and spent multiple weeks on the cooler, this year my boyfriend and I will be painting our cooler together. We’ll probably only spend a few hours on it, but it will hold all the memories just the same!