On Trend: Rice in a Bottle
By decorating the water bottles with colorful, comical and meaningful stickers, Rice students turn the practical into artful with each sip.
Winter 2025
Story and photos by Zeisha Bennett '25
Leslie Rojo Flores ’28 uses stickers to signify and summarize her time at Rice. The owl sticker she added before matriculation kicked off her bottle’s sticker collection.
Hong Lin Tsai ’26 is the creator of the popular Sammy the Owl stickers — many of which cover his water bottle. Tsai has produced more than 30 sticker designs and sells them on Instagram. The water bottle not only reflects his creative identity, but he says it is also “a great conversation starter.”
Keeping with a pink aesthetic, Kendall Martin ’28 decorates with “only the super cute ones on the bottle, [while] the rest go on the computer.”
“I realized the hidden utility in a sticker-decorated bottle — identification,” says Joselyn Lwigale ’26. Faves? A “Be my swolemate” sticker from Rice’s Barbara and David Gibbs Recreation and Wellness Center and a holographic sticker from the Rice Women’s Resource Center.
“Rice and travel” are the two themes visible on Genesis Hahn’s ’25 water bottle, which is full of homages to the clubs, activities and places she has visited while a student.
Using a calculated approach, Eric Chen ’27 “made sure there was a variety of colors, fonts and formats” to present the best bottle he could. His stickers document his adventures.