An Altered Ballet Dress

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Well, this year for Halloween, we needed to economize a bit, so we couldn't go out and get a costume for our youngest the way we usually do. Instead, we looked to her closet, in which she has several "old" ballet recital costumes - these were worn only twice: once for her photo, once for the recital. And it seemed like such a waste! (Especially if you saw what we had to spend on them) I suppose I could have sold them on Craigslist but I doubt I would have gotten anywhere near what we paid for them.

Now, fortunately, for the ballet recital, they have a rental system where we rent out the costumes. It doesn't cost as much and we don't have a ballet recital outfit that she'll never wear again.

Anyway, this year, Lilith wanted to be a zombie. So she had her eye on several zombie costumes from Party City, but, we really couldn't afford to spend money on a costume (another outfit that would be worn once). So, my mind started thinking... why spend money on a zombie costume... when really what makes a zombie a zombie is their make-up ... there are no hard-core rules as to what a zombie wears.

So, I told her, either choose an outfit from her wardrobe that she wouldn't mind scuffing up (she has a dress that still fits but is a little worn), or choose one of her ballet recital outfits and we'll alter that and make it zombie-fied.

She chose the latter.

Here are some photos of her as a zombie before we altered the dress:

Cute... but, the dress looked a little too pristine to be a zombie outfit.

So... I altered it:


I guess I could have done more to it than just torn and discolored the tulle, I guess I could have scuffed up the velvet part as well, but, it was hard enough for me to cut, tear and discolor the tulle. The "conservative" parent voice inside my head kept reminding me how much I paid for this dress.

But... when all is said and done, she is REALLY happy with the result. This is the best Halloween costume she's had yet, and it is something that nobody else out there will have. There may be zombies, but none quite as cute! And, we saved about 40 bucks (which is what we probably would have paid for a new costume) in the process, and we probably wouldn't have gotten 40 bucks back from re-selling the costume on Craigslist. In my opinion, it's a win-win!

Hope your Halloween is a fun and frightening one!

Yeah, It's been a while...

But, I've been blogging, just not here. I've been keeping busy doing tea reviews. And ... coincidentally, drinking a lot of tea in the process.

I've not done a lot of art this year, but I am getting back into the swing of things. Lately, I've been working on fatbook pages with a travel theme. We're to do 32 pages for this swap. Each one of mine is a little different from the others... although they are pretty similar in the techniques and colors that I've used. The images is what makes most of them different.

Here's one of them ...


I'm pretty happy with them... I've invested a whole lot more time than I thought I would when I embarked upon this project... each page has a lot of different layers, and since I'm no jewelry artist, the chain embellishment work isn't a piece of cake.

But, it has been fun to be working on art again.

~Anne