DIY Doily Wedding Dresses

About 2 weeks ago, I promised you a tutorial on how to make the doily wedding dresses that I made for my cousin's shower invitations. Well, hey! Better late than never! ;)

Let's get one thing straight first. These were not a brain child of mine, no sir. I wish I had come up with them. Pinterest introduced me to these fancy frocks by way of a blog called Paper, Paws, etc.

Here is my step-by-step tutorial to make your own paper princess ball gowns!

Supplied needed:

- 4" paper doilies, I found them in the cake section of my craft store (you need approx 2 doilies for each dress, so plan ahead)

- Gluesticks

- Scissors

- White cardstock

- Ribbon, in your choice of color

- Heart punch (any craft store should sell one big enough)

- Brads, or any decorative embellishment that can be adhered without falling off easily

   

First off, you need to determine which is the the pretty side of the doily and which is the rough. I think it's pretty easy to tell when it's in front of you, but I included a picture above for reference just in case.

Since you want the pretty side to be more dominant, turn it face down. Rough side up, if you will.

Then, fold the doily just to the white circle at the bottom. Don't fold the doily in half completely, because you're wanting to create 2 layers of the dress. You'll see just about an inch of rough lace when you look at your folded doily.

Crease so that you have a firm edge.

Then, take the top right corner of the doily and bring it down towards the left, lining it up where the white circle and the lace meet. A 90 degree angle, as long as you don't check my measurements for correctness. Or my grammar. ;)

Glue that corner so that it doesn't come apart. You don't need a lot of glue, and make sure it dries clear since you're going to be gluing on the lace part.

When you're done, you should have a triangle point at the top, and 3 layers of the dress. The rough part at the bottom of the dress, then a folded part in the middle, and the piece you just folded over and glued down.

Now to make the top of the dress! 

Take a doily and fold it in half. Put it on top of a piece of white cardstock and position it in the heart stamp so that you like what you see. I felt that you needed to see some white so that the sweetheart neckline was lace only. It's totally up to you.

This will actually make 2 doily hearts, so you'll need to make more white cardstock hearts to keep up. I tried folding the cardstock in half as well, and it was too thick for my punch to go through the stack. Experiment!

Glue the doily to the white cardstock. Aww, so pretty!

Snip off the sides of the heart at an angle... I actually cut too much off of this one (in my personal opinion... also too straight), so the finished product I'm showing you is much cuter than this one would have been. Oops!

Also take the tip of the skirt and fold it backwards, and glue down.


Glue the top of the dress to the bottom piece, and wrap your ribbon around the two pieces. Glue the ribbon to the back to attach it, but DO NOT glue the ribbon on the front of the dress.

Keep it loose, goose!

See? You needed to keep it unglued in front because the next step is to put another piece of ribbon through the sash. I liked how it looked when it was at uneven lengths, but do what ever makes you happy.

Then push the brad through the whole dang mess to secure the ribbon, or glue any embellishment you want to put there. If you don't want anything to embellish the sash, you could just glue the ribbon down, to make sure it doesn't fall out.

I hope you have fun with these.... you should definitely send me a picture of your finished pieces if you decide to make them! I'd love to see them

Or, I am totally for hire. Call me, maybe! ;)