Each year as October comes closer and closer to its end we findourselves taking sides. Love it or Hate it. The haters normally dothings like, disappear when the convo turns to costumes or plan anapple picking trip to the mountains for the last weekend of October(that's for you, Tim and Raylene). But you'll find me on the Love side,mainly because, the word Halloween is synonymous with Creativity for me(oh yes, and you get to act like a fool in public for one night and noone seems to care.) Every year it comes down to the decision of thecostume? Basically I feel like missing the opportunity to get crazywith creativity would be a disservice to my title of "designer."

This year I focused less of my energy on "getting into character" and more on "getting into costume." The seed of an idea popped in my head early on. I had been messing around with alternate ways of creating things using paper in my graduate design thesis (where I created paper dresses for a fashion and identity exhibit, you can check it out here) and in a wedding invitation (where I deconstructed an atlas and used each page as a pocket folio to hold invite components, you can check it out here.) Then I saw Kirk Smith's creations in this year's 2010 Art to Wear Fashion Show and I have been dying to make an actual, wearable dress out of paper, much like his creation using Jimmy John's wrappers (check it out here).

First I needed to come up with a theme. I knew I wanted it to be a book and thought about using romance novels, Stephen King's Carrie, or Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind before I settled on William Goldman's The Princess Bride. I set out for supplies a few days before Halloween and two books, mounds of adhesive, a bit of clear wire, an elastic band, multiple strips of velcro, return trips to Michaels and Barnes and Noble, plus some stitching later I was wearing my creation by party time on Saturday night.