Wedding Dress Miniature Craft

Instructions

1. Creating the dress form: You can use a finished dress form or create one yourself. Here is how you create one yourself. Use an old bottle. Soak strips of newspaper in wood glue and cover the bottle with the paper strips. Create a “female” shape on the bottle, using the newspaper strips. Make sure you cover the dress form on the bottle with a layer of paper strips at the end, for a smooth finish. Let the dress form dry. The wooden glue will make the dress form quite hardy.

2. Creating the base for the dress: Put the dress form onto an upside down vase. Add clingfilm to the dress form and the vase. This will make it easier to remove the dress form and the vase from the dress later.

3. Creating the dress: Cut strips of cheesecloth. Add fabric hardener. Create the waist and bust. Cut strips of cheesecloth to create the skirt, add fabric hardener and add to the dress. Let dry for at least 24h (Read the drying time on the fabric hardener bottle).

4. Removing the dress form and vase from the dress: Cut the dress open at the back and remove the dress form. Make sure you also remove the clingfilm (in between the dress, dress form and vase) from the dress. Now you want to close the back of the dress. Add fabric hardener to a strip of cheesecloth and wrap it around the waste and bust of the dress.

5. Adding texture to the dress: You may add some lace to the dress. You can add this around the waste and bust and/or on the skirt. Add fabric hardener to the lace and add it to the dress. Let the dress dry (According to the drying time on the fabric hardener bottle).

6. Painting the dress: Paint the dress with acrylic paint. You might want to spray paint or use a brush. First, add a basecoat of paint. You can also dry paint to add extra colour effects on the dress. Let the dress dry.

7. Adding the underskirt: This underskirt is an advanced underskirt. This underskirt has created, using several long triangles of paper and sewing them together. The seams were left on the inside, under the underskirt. This created the folds in the underskirt. A simple underskirt (paper cone) was glued under the underskirt, to keep the fold in the paper evenly spaced, and adding stability to the dress.

8. Adding a base to the dress: A base, will make the dress show of better. You can for instance use an old candlestick for this.

9. Embellish the dress: Decorate the dress as you like. You can for instance use paper flowers, buttons, brads, paints and mists. I also used foil as a decoration on the dress. The foil was used with glue and with sticky adhesive sheets and dies.