Dress-ful moments - and how to recycle in a creative way

Have you ever tried to make a dress?

Have you ever tried to do the same thing only using recyclable materials? If yes HI FIVE!!!

It’s fun, challenging and really fulfilling in the end.

I have been doing freelance modelling for a few years and last year around this time I was approached by a local pageant competition organiser.

I have never done pageantry so I said yes to it. We live only once after all. Plus wanted to find out if the preconceived ideas about pageant competitions were real. But that is a story for another time.

As part of the competition we all had to create an EcoDress in support of recycling. I absolutely loved this because I think we could do so much better in every country when it comes to recycling.

Soo… The dress had to be wearable. In fact, I had to wear the dress on the evening of the final. And I did.

I’m a creative individual as well as competitive one so this task made me really excited.

First stop Pinterest -as always- to look for inspirations and amazing creations.
I was ecstatic by the end of all that research. Just couldn’t wait to get started.

Last thing I had to do was to decide what to use to make the dress. I chose to use paper for my dress. Not too original I know.
You might even say, it was an obvious and easy choice… I thought so too until I started to put the dress together....

I spent 2 months modelling and remodelling the paper dress using only cardboard, magazines, lot of glue and some black duct tape....
During this time I loved the dress, couldn’t wait to finish it and show it off but I was ready to lit it up more than enough times too. #creativemadness

Let me shows you in images how it all went down. And be my judge on how I have done!

First I just wanted to start with a sturdy base using cardboard and hoped to achieve a corset. It's actually really hard to mould and soften cardboard. I had to try and squash it before doing anything.

On this one you can actually see I have decided to create a long dress and the corset is actually looking a lot better. To create length news paper is the best. I could layer it and progress relatively fast.

My first attempt at finding material to fasten the corset was a stronger bin liner.....Let's just say it's not the best thing to use as it is not strong enough. Gaffa/duct tape worked the best for me in the end.

When I began my dress I imagined it to be very colourful and eye catching. I have used magazine pages to decorate and create flowers to stick on. I pretty much used up my entire Vogue magazine collection going back years.

Also, it is not that easy to spot but I have made the front of the dress shorter by this point. There were a couple of issues with having a long dress. Mainly the fact that I wouldn't have been able to step in it. I was trying to avoid looking like a Tin Man on the stage.

And what is a dress without some kind of accessories?! I thought throwing around a couple of fashion brand names on a paper chocker looked relevant at the time.

The finished dress!

And there is me wearing the dress on the night of the final.

Let me know what you think!
And I hope this article encourages you to recycle more because a lot of the things we use can be re-used and we only got this planet to live on.

Keep being awesome Steemians!