Over the span of 6 years, I had the opportunity to tour the U.S. with Cirque du Soleil on two shows. Being around so much creativity on a daily basis, I couldn’t help but be inspired to create my own (unofficial) Cirque souvenirs. Below are a few of the designs that came about over the years.

Stickers

After a year and a half on tour, I had the idea to create “city stickers” to commemorate the show and city that we visited. Unfortunately, this was short-lived with Volta as the pandemic hit shortly after I started making them. When Bazzar came to Philly I wanted to bring them back as a commemoration of their first stop on the U.S. tour. Though I didn’t keep up with stickers for every city, I did channel the iconography into one big sticker when we learned the U.S. tour was ending. I had also made a generic big top sticker somewhere along the way, and decided to dust off that design and tailor it to Bazzar specifically as a memory of ‘home’ under the big top.

Crafts

The Cirque crafts came about as something of an accident. In the beginning of my tour days, I started out as an usher. As part of the job, we had to clean up after the shows, during which time I’d find numerous used tickets that were in like-new condition. I started collecting them as a memento of the cities we visited, but after a large accumulation, I had the idea to do something with them. I’d made paper snowflakes before and thought that this would be a lightweight and small keepsake to have of time on tour.

On top of tickets, I also rescued some damaged souvenir programs (that we un-sellable) from the trash and turned them into snowflakes and ornaments. In 2020, I made Cirque-themed holiday cards for my friends, and recycled some of the program pages into ornaments.

T-shirts

VOLTA – At the time, I was in an AirBNB with 5 girls so it soon became a joke that we were a “sorority house.” After a long week of work the idea came to me: what if there was a Volta sorority. As a follower with Cirque, we didn’t get the corporate wear so I created this design for us, the followers. Our own ‘sorority’: Volta Omega Alpha. I utilized the font of the Volta logo as I incorporated the traditional Greek lettering. I added in the hexagons in homage of the iconic shape of the show as well as its message to “find your free.”

BAZZAR – As the U.S. tour came to an end, the company manager decided to have shirts made for this leg of the tour. They decided to choose the design based on votes, and I was fortunate to have been offered the opportunity to submit a design. Though it was not selected to be the design for the shirt, I am still very happy with how this design turned out.