During half-time on Friday’s Homecoming football game, Emilie Ikeda was named North Penn’s Homecoming queen. However, unlike in the past years where the queen was given a tiny, plastic tiara, Ikeda was crowned with a one-of-a-kind tiara hand designed by Andrea Petrille.

Petrille, a member of the 1994 homecoming court, has owned her own business, Anca Pe ‘elma, LLC, for six years, designing bridal pieces and accessories.  Now branching into prop and costume design, she contacted North Penn a number of months ago to design the special piece for this year’s Homecoming.

The tiara, took about a week to produce and “is an intricate lacework of silver branches, leaves and tiny flowers. It also includes a handful of handmade clay flowers,” explained Petrille.   

Encrusted with Swarvoski crystals and blue rhinestones, the tiara took Petrille months of thinking up of a design and how she wanted to execute it.

“I wanted to make something super-sparkly, but also tasteful and well-executed. Of course it had to include the school colors of Columbia and navy,” said Petrille.

The tiara, according to Ikeda, “is GOREGEOUS! It has these little blue stones in it so it even matched my dress!”

Petrille hopes to continue to make a new Homecoming tiara year after year, giving every Homecoming queen a special keepsake from the event.