Just to throw another suggestion:

I'm currently making some prototype bracelets for a few sororities. They are bracelets made out of elegant Swarovski crystal beads and sterling silver Greek letter beads. You can easily buy wholesale crystal beads for a great price. It could also be a great social activity for your sorority to make bracelets for your littles.

For price range:

Greek letter beads: http://www.auntiesbeads.com/ProductD...3-38f5eb883a21

Assuming you buy in bulk along with some other letter beads. Each bracelet would best fit up to 7-10 characters. Assuming you put 3 greek letters, 89 cents each, that would be around $2.70.

Swarovski crystal beads: https://www.astralbeads.com/sw_5301_6mm.aspx

most people will use 6mm bicone beads, or even 8mm. Each bracelet would need roughly about 25-30 6mm beads. Average price per color for 36 beads would be roughly about $5-6.

Including other material (clasps, other beads if you wise and wire), the price per bracelet would be roughly $10

Consider the market price of the same kind of bracelet (as you see in department stores, using the famous Swarovski crystal) would be about $50-$60. It's a great deal. I'm sure your sorority sisters would love it =)

That's my advice =)

You can also check if any of your symbols are common, if they are then you might be able to find pretty inexpensive stock jewlery. For example a few years ago I found sailboat necklace and earings at a going out of business sale. I got 3 sets of eah for a total of 5$ including shipping!

There is one other local sorority on campus.... and we may eventually colonize a national chapter... but the reason we became local to begin with was that we couldn't get nationals to come in since we are such a small campus with deteriorating greek life... we're hoping to turn that around.

I may have missed this, but what school are you at?

(I'm also a Pittsburgher)

If my memory is working today, some sororities did just this in their early days, before pledge pins became common.

I go to school at Saint Francis University which is in Loretto, PA. but I'm from Pittsburth... love my steelers!!!

Sigma Kappa still does, wearing them after the installation of a new chapter that sort of thing. Some chapters pin their new girls with their "colors" on bid day and then do pledging later...

Yup. All the Baylor sororities give out pins to new members with ribbons of the sorority's colors on Bid Day. Everyone wears them until they're through pledging. :)

My chapter still "ribbons" girls. About a week or so before they pledge. We kept our ribbons and wore them every Thursday for "Spirit Day". We also always wore them with our badges for chapter, greek events and stuff like that. When women lost badges we used a yellow rose on a pin (from JoAnne or Micheals etc...) until the badge could be replaced. The green and gold pops out and it's quite pretty.

My sorority does ribbons for our pledge pins and all of the NPCs on campus give their new members ribbons to wear on days when they aren't dressed up.

In college we had nice ribbons (they were purple with white ribbon glued on) for "I Week" that NM's wore with their badges as well as active sisters with their badges. If we were not dressed up enough to wear our badge then normally we would wear plainer ribbons on our bags. I still have my ribbons from college actually, I keep them in the same box I keep my badge in.

Same here :) Sometimes older sisters would make new members KD bags and we would affix our pins to them and wear them everywhere :) Sorority bags are also fun and inexpensive :)

We did something similar for this with the All-Panhellenic pledging ceremony...I want to say the ribbons were purple(?), but it has been a few years I can't remember.

Cutie, you are a beader? :)

Check out this site:

http://www.shipwreckbeads.com/

This shop is close to my house and has a cafe and bookstore devoted to crafts and beadwork inside it too...you can literally spend a day in there.

If one of your symbols is fairly common, you could just use a lapel pin. There are many websites that sell lapel pins of all different types.
Check www.pinmart.com or www.lapelpinplanet.com