What We Do With The Dresses

By far, the most frequently asked question regarding our paper dresses is this: “What do you do with the dresses after she wears them?” Or some other variation like “How do you preserve the dresses?” or “Do you have a closet filled with paper dresses?”.

And the answer usually shocks most people.

After wearing them for approximately 5 minutes, Mayhem takes them off, and we tear the tape off and put every bit of the paper we can salvage back into our paper stash. And then we reuse that paper again and again and again until we no longer can. Scraps of paper we can no longer use end up at the recycling center here in our community. FYI – the Scotch brand packing tape we buy in bulk comes back off of construction paper VERY easily. With tissue paper, rather than attempting to tear the tape off, I usually cut it off to minimize the damage and maximize reusability. And a recent find is that masking tape comes off of tissue paper with relative ease if we de-construct the dress right away.

This has been the way we’ve operated from the beginning. Until recently.

This project runway replica dress was among the first that we just couldn’t bring ourselves to part with:

Yet.

So we taped it up on the wall. And started a small gallery. A little bit for inspiration and a lotta bit to remind us that we can do anything we set our minds to. We currently have about 10 dresses taped to the walls of our “design studio”.

If you’ve ever visited our FAQ page, you may have seen me mention that what we’re doing really has a whole lot more to do with the time I get to spend with Mayhem, rather than wearing the dresses. And that’s the absolute truth. We spend WAY more time making them than she ever dreams of wearing them (except for all versions of Anna’s coronation dress – the kid is OBSESSED with all things Frozen and wears those until they are in SHREDS).

But we’re pretty much out of display space at this point. Unless we take Mayhem’s advice and “Let’s just get a bigger house with bigger walls!”.

Duh! Now who wants to give a four year old a mortgage? Or a job? Preferably in the reverse order

So we’re back to de-constructing as we go. Or swapping out old display dresses for new ones. I’ve had a few people suggest that we should auction off some of our dresses for a cause (or multiple causes) and I’m entertaining that idea. I’m not sure how much interest there would really be, but if some good stuff could happen from what we’re doing, then that’s absolutely a train we’d like to take a ride on.

We’ll see. But for now, hopefully that clues you in to what we’ve found is the most burning question about what we do.

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