When Rachael and Sam of Imoni Events were planning a WIPA event at the Phoenix Art Museum, they made a request that I’ve never received before. They asked me to make a dress. Out of paper. A paper dress. Mind you, I’ve designed clothes for the idieh design shop, and I’ve crafted many a thing out of paper, but I’ve never married the two entities.
Paper Dress? Say What?!?
As I learned from Saskia & Mike’s modern wedding, the art museum is such a cool and unique venue that I knew I wanted to make a statement with the piece I created (not to mention I wanted it to be a LBD). I started by sketching out my ideas, and then figuring out how to make my vision a reality. Again, using paper. If you know anything about me, you know I have a thing for hearts, so I knew that had to be a part of the dress. I also wanted the dress to look like a piece someone could actually wear.
After coming up with the initial design, I got to work by first building the silhouette out of papier-mâché. Um, no easy task. I then mixed strips of paper with different finishes – metallic, shimmer, matte – to give the bottom half of the dress dimension and texture while I layered multiple sized hearts up top for the bodice. (Yes, the process was WAY more in-depth than that, but we all want to see the finished masterpiece, right?!) And voila, this was the final result! Pretty sweet, huh?!
I heart (no pun intended) that it ended up being the perfect combination of sexy and sweet, while appearing to be a dress someone could really wear to a black tie event!
The fact that WIPA provides local members of the wedding community the chance to explore and extend their talents through their quarterly meetings like the black & gold speakeasy event is always a win in my book. And, I’m always a fan of breaking down creative barriers and discovering how to create out-of-the-box ideas.
Thank you thank you to Elyse Hall Photography for the images! As you can tell, I really love these events for the laughs and friendships.
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