At the start of July, I saw that the Austin City Limits Festival was holding a contest to win a pair of 3-Day Passes to Weekend 2 of the music festival. The contest was as follows:

Each day between July 1st-10th, a festival employee would hang out around town (Austin, TX) and give away a pair of tickets to someone that they saw rockin' their ACL gear.

Totally rad.

This quickly caught my attention despite the fact that I [one] don't live in Austin and [two] didn't have any ACL Festival gear to rock as I hadn't yet been to the festival.

Despite these minor (or major, depending how you look at it) details, I one hundred percent, absolutely, with every music-loving inch of my soul wanted to win a pair of these passes. My friend Crandall and I were already planning to attend, however we didn't yet have passes. And so sprung the idea of making my own ACL t-shirt and posting it on Instagram with the contest's hashtag, #ACLirl.

It was a long shot but I figured, why not? I had nothing to loose. At the very least, it'd be a fun personal project of designing my own shirt.

So I set upon gathering my materials, which included: freezer paper (this would be my first foray at freezer paper stenciling), a sketch book, pencil, bottle of ink, paint brush, an exacto knife, fabric paint, an iron and a white t-shirt. I then turned on the sweet sounds of WFUV's The Alternate Side and got to it.

First, I sketched out the design. I then went over it with the ink to darken it up for the stenciling. Once the ink dried, I laid the freezer paper over the sketch book and traced the design with a pencil. Next was the meticulous hand-cramping step of cutting out the stencil with the exacto knife. Once that was done, I laid the stencil down on the shirt, ironed it on so that the freezer paper was adhered to it, and painted in the stencil.

All of this took me about four hours which slipped away under my consciousness. I have to say, it was quite a meditative process.

I went to bed and let the paint dry. In the morning, I peeled off the freeze-paper stencil, ironed the shirt again to activate the fabric paint and that was it! The shirt was ready. I put it on and headed to work.

When I got there, I asked a friend of mine to snap a photo of me outside in the streets of Soho. I then posted the photo to Instagram asking ACL if those outside the Austin area were also eligible, and added in the #ACLirl contest hashtag so that they'd see it.

I didn't hear anything from ACL Festival that day, which wasn't all that surprising. I knew it was a long shot to begin with.

The next morning, Crandall texted me to see if I had heard anything yet of which the answer was still "No." She then took it upon herself to repost the photo and tweet about my crafty hopes of winning festival passes.

About an hour later, my phone lit up with an Instagram notification from @ACLFestival. My heart skipped and my stomach dropped. I opened my phone, went to Instagram and saw a comment from ACL Festival letting me know that they they thought my little personal project was awesome and they were going to give me a pair of 3-Day Passes for Weekend 2 of the festival.

I was beside myself. Absolutely beside myself and overly ecstatic to have won weekend passes. Three full days of live music down in Austin, TX with one of my best friends and music comrade. 

This was simply amazing.

And so, today's the day! I leave for Austin in a few hours and can't wait for the weekend of live music to begin -- it's gonna be rad.

Some of the bands I'm most excited to see are:

Milo Greene, Ben Howard, Daughter, San Fermin, Foo Fighters, Gary Clarke Jr., Tame Impala, BORNS, Lord Huron, Leon Bridges, Halsey, Of Monsters and Men, Shakey Graves, Sylvan Esso and finally along with most importantly, Florence + the Machine. 

So stay tuned to the social media channels for picture and video updates of the festival!

Let's do this --

xxChris