Newspaper articles and contests!!!

Less than a week left in the contest!!! I really hope we're doing well, they don't let us know how many votes we've gotten so far :P

I've started a contest of my own on my facebook page (mentioned a couple posts back with a link) designed to create more publicity and whoever wins gets one of my handmade wallets :D So go like that page and enter the contest!

Also, we were in a major local newspaper today, which is super amazing! Front page, too. Here's a link to the article... Click Here

So I've been doing all the publicity I could think of and promoting the contest whenever I can, is there anything I'm missing? Let me know if you have a promotional idea for me and I'll make sure to do it!

Duct tape celebrities

Alex, Amanda, and I went to the fair last Friday and although they didn't let us hand out flyers, we did wear our outfits. At least, I wore my dress, Alex wore his jacket. We got weird looks from pretty much everyone we passed, which I thought was awesome but I won't claim to represent Alex with that statement :P Quite a few people stopped us to ask questions, and one lady got really excited and said, "I feel like I'm talking to celebrities!"

Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera, so I don't have any pictures. I will be going back to the fair this Wednesday, however, and I'm still debating on whether or not to wear my dress since I'm only going to perform a song. If I do, I'll definitely take pictures.

Where else should I publicize?

Duct tape wallets and contact info

I've started setting up to sell wallets, mostly by designing and working on examples I can post pictures of. I've also created a new e-mail account I'll be using for everything duct tape, like media and the wallet-selling. It's ducttaperoses992@gmail.com.

I'll post pictures of the example wallets and start selling as soon as I can.

Publicity

Alex and I had an interview with an online newspaper today. It was a lot of fun, and the story will run on Monday, so expect a post about that :)

I've been handing out flyers to practically everyone, so hopefully that's getting us some extra votes. I've also been posting on Facebook every day reminding people to vote.

I'm planning on going to the faire sometime this weekend, so we'll see if they'll let me advertise there as well. I'll post pictures if I do :D

Also, I went to the craft store the other day for something unrelated, and ended up buying two rolls of duct tape just because. I got black because I was running out, and yellow because there wasn't any really bright colors in my leftover duct tape spectrum. I haven't decided what to make next, though. That's probably my cue to start selling wallets...

TOP TEN!!!

We got into the top ten out of over 300 entries!!!! Now we need to get as many online votes as we can by July 11th. Here's the link to vote: Vote Here! You do need to register on the website, but it takes less than a minute and I promise they won't start sending you stuff. In fact, I've been trying to sign up for their newsletter, and for some reason my request never goes through. So they're not sending me stuff even if I want them to :P

This next month is going to be a barrage of publicity material and fun stuff like that, so stay tuned to hear what crazy stuff I'll do to get votes. I'm already planning on going to the county fair wearing my dress, but I have to make sure they won't kick me out for unauthorized advertisement or something along those lines... Leave suggestions in the comment section on how I should publicize! And go like our page on facebook :D Chelsey and Alexander for Stuck At Prom Duck Tape Scholarship Contest

Fancy Hat

Well, here's the hat I was working on. It took two days and two rolls of leftover tape :P
I'm definitely going to be wearing this thing everywhere I go...

Entry Approved!

Yay!!!!!

Our entry is now avaliable to view at www.stuckatprom.com in the "2011 Gallery" section. There's five photos there, some of which I haven't posted anywhere else. Also, they let me use the tango picture with the photoshopped background :D

So now I have to wait for them to announce the top 10 on June 17th, the same day the voting starts. So please keep tabs on that with me!

I've been doing some thinking about what I'm going to do with this blog once the contest is over, and I decided to keep it going and keep it duct tape themed. I saw this really gorgeous fancy dress hat the other day that was way too expensive for me to buy, but I've decided to make it out of duct tape because I can. Also, I'm planning to start selling duct tape wallets and I'll probably give my blog readers a discount...

So stay tuned for all of that! Hopefully I'll be making more frequent blog posts between now and the top ten announcement...

Our entry!

Whew! Now all we have to do is wait...

So there were a lot of curve balls thrown at us while we were filling out the entry forms online.

First of all, I'd looked at the descriptive blurbs and guessed that there was a 100 word limit to them. So, I wrote a 98 word description ahead of time. When I got to the requirements for that, the limit was actually 500 characters, including spaces. So we took a while to edit the blurb, because I used a lot of big words and was about 80 characters over.

Secondly, there were a few requirements for the pictures that were NOT in the official rules, which only says 1 to 5 high resolution photos. We debated what to do for a good 15 minutes before we decided that 5"x7" 300 dpi only applied to scanned photos. Since the images were directly from my computer, I had no idea how to measure them like that. So we just cropped our tango photo to a 5x7 dimension and turned them in as is. Hopefully anyone entering in future years will see this and not be suprised. That's partly why I'm doing this...

And just because, here's our accessories collage!

Definitely a multitude of stars...

So i did some counting and guesstimating as to how many stars went into both the outfits and the accessories, and I came up with a rounded number of 950..............

Yikes.

So...

I'm just going to put in the description blurb that it's "almost a thousand." Because it kinda is...

Aaaaand candid photos from the pre-prom shoot!




By the way, thanks so much to everyone who follows my blog! It really means a lot to have so much support, and it'll definitely count if we get into the top ten!

Candid photo and what I've been doing with my spare time

So while we were attempting the tango pose shown in the last post, the strain of bending over and lifting the arm became too much for Alex's jacket and the button popped off. Instead of getting out of the pose to fix it/put it somewhere nicely, I snatched it out of the buttonhole and tossed it out of the frame. However, my mom was still snapping photos and managed to get this beauty with the button flying through the air.

In other news, I guess it'll take me a while to stop taping stuff (if I ever do). I just made myself a colorful wallet with all the trimmings, including a card holder with a window and a section for coins with a flap to keep them from falling out. I'll probably make more sometime and sell them on ebay...

Promotional material

Well, I think we've got our 5 pictures pretty much sorted out. The rules say we can submit 1 to 5 high resolution photos of the outfits, so I'm going to use as much as I can. I put more than one picture on some pages, especially the accessories page which has six different pictures in a collage. After I was done with that, I messed around with photoshop and made some "poster pictures," as I like to call them. Here's my favorite. Enjoy!

Photoshoots

Alex and I got together again today, but this time it was to take photos and we were at my theatre director's studio. She had a black curtain we used as a backdrop and floor-to-ceiling mirrors we used to practice our poses before we did the shoot. There was one pose that was rather difficult, and Alex popped the button on his jacket while doing it. My mom snapped a photo of me in the act of tossing the button to the side, with the button clearly seen flying through the air...

Since these are the photos I'm going to use in our entry, I won't post any until I've sent it in and it gets approved (Well, maybe I'll post the candid shot of the button. I'll think about it). I'm going to call the Duck Tape company before I turn the entry in just to make sure I have everything in order.

Pictures!!!

Prom was awesome!!! And everyone loved the outfits. Here's a picture of me and Alex in the limo bus and another one we took before prom. I'll post more closer to when I'll be sending in our entry.

SUCCESS!!!!!

Wow, Blogger was down for a really long time yesterday and now I come back and find my latest post is missing...

Well, I finished it!!! I was up till 1:30 last night putting the finishing touches on the dress, but I managed to do everything I wanted to do, including tweaking and superfluous details. I talked about covering press-on nails with duct tape in the last post, and I was able to finish those with the silver tips as well. Now for the non-attire details such as packing my wonderfully accomodating duct tape purse with the prom neccessities and extra duct tape, just in case. I wrapped about two feet each of black, purple, and white around a pencil and packed that instead of bringing rolls.

I'm really happy right now. I got done everything I needed to get done, and all the extra things I wanted to do, like adding purple to the purse and making more star hairpins.

Since people will see the outfits tonight and probably take pictures, I'll post some of my own snapshots tomorrow. Both of the outfits look amazing, if I do say so myself.

And just because I'm finished making the attire, the blog posting's not done yet. I plan to go all the way up until the winners are announced, so keep checking back for entry photos and collages!

Almost there with 2 days to go!!

Well, the shirt wasn't quite right, so I fixed it today and it's fine now. I know I keep saying I'm done with everything except the dress train, but I keep finding more things to do. I'll look at what I have and think, "This doesn't look quite right..." "I should add..." and "Wouldn't it be even more awesome if..."

So I finished my second pair of faux lashes (the first pair wasn't working out), made duct tape press-on nails, and added smaller stars to the back of Alex's jacket. I'm back to the train now, and I'm definitely going to finish this before I do anything else. If I have enough time, I'm going to add silver tips to the nails.

The pressure's on, and I better finish this on time. I'll work on it all tonight and probably most of tomorrow as well...

4 days to go...

Nothing much to report...

I've been wrapping up all the last details like adding a back pocket to the pants and elaborating on details on the belt and shoes. I also fixed the shirt/vest (I think, he hasn't tried it on yet) because the vest was connected too low to the shirt and prevented the shirt tucking into the pants properly...

I'll be getting more purple duct tape from Alex later today so I can add to the design on the jacket. I'm done with everything except for that, putting a button on it, and finishing my dress train. I'm very confident that I'll be able to finish this on time, and hopefully a day early. I'd like some down time before the actual event to get rid of my dark circles... :P

One week to go!!!

I was over at Alex's house today trying to duct tape stuff, but we were shocked to discover that there really wasn't much to do. Which is awesome...

We started looking at technical details like hairstyles and posing for the photos. We found some really awesome poses based on the Argentine tango and the waltz so we got our ballroom dance teacher to help us pull them off. I'm going to ask my theatre director if we can use her studio to take some pre-prom pictures, since the studio has black walls, a big black curtain, and a full wall of mirrors. It's where I took my senior portraits as well.

All I have left to do is put a button on the jacket, add some more decorations on the belt, make a pocket square, finish my faux lashes, and make the star train for the dress. I can definitely finish that in a week, so I'm super excited!

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Ok, I've been at an enthusiasm low for the past couple days, but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I finally got all the way around my dress with the stars last night, now I just need to go upwards with them and give it the nice gradient you can kinda see on the left side.

I'm so sick of cutting stars you would not believe it. And you'd think I'd be super good at it by now, since I've been doing it since January of '10, but I still produce strange, lopsided things at the same rate I cut nice, symmetrical ones. It's almost over, though. Once I'm done cutting the sticky stars for the body of the dress (which I'd estimate will take about two more batches), I'll use the stockpile of double-sided stars for the train.

I am behind with the whole star thing, but I decided I'd rather have the stars on the body of the dress than the train, so I just went over my deadline and pushed the train back a bit till I finish this, which shouldn't take more than two more days, including today. I'm on track with everything else, though. I've finished putting the vest on the shirt, decorating Alex's shoes, decorating the jacket, decorating the belt, and putting belt loops on the pants. I'm supposed to finish making the jewelry today, but all I've got is a design for earrings. I think that's enough, since I can't wear a necklace with the dress because of the neckline and I have a corsage for my wrist. If I have time I might make a star bracelet to wear on my other wrist...

Hopefully I'll finish the stars on the dress today, since I don't have to go anywhere tonight. After that, I'll cram on the train and then I'm just about finished. I'll try to get that done in three days, which will give us at least from the 9th to the 12th to tweak stuff till we're happy.

I'm excited!!! :D

Schedules

Ok, so with the pressure on and two weeks to go, I actually made a schedule to follow and if I follow it, I'll be done with all the necessities pretty early. After that, I can work out any details and fix up stuff that didn't quite turn out the way we wanted it. So far so good, except I'll need more time to stick stars onto the body of the dress. To cut the stars, I stick strips down on a plastic cutting board and use a razor knife, which yields about 24 stars per "batch." It's taking me over an hour to cover about a square foot of area, and I don't think three more days is going to cut it. Still, it includes Saturday, so I won't rule out success just yet. If I can't finish it, I'll just stop at where I got to, make it look good, and move on. Then I'll come back to it if I have time.


Basically, here's where I've scheduled myself to finish things:


4/27 - Finish colors on jacket (which I did)


4/29 - Finish the vest and any other details on the shirt


4/30 - Finish stars on dress, finish Alex's shoes, finish jacket stars


5/1 - Finish belt


5/2 - Finish details on pants, like belt loops


5/4 - Finish jewelry


5/5 - Finish dress train


At that point, we're done (I think). That gives us about a week to adjust and tweak until we're happy with everything. For example, I did finish the colors on the jacket yesterday, but I feel like ther's too much white. After we're done with everything else, I'd like to go back and add some more purple. But for now, it's done.

What I've been up to all week

This post is mostly going to be a barrage of pictures and a quick description of what's been going on all week. Alex and I got together three times because of spring break, so we got a whole bunch done.

The pants are completely wearable, including all the fastening (for which we used Velcro)and I just need to add belt loops and come up with a decoration design.

I'm almost done with the decorations on the jacket, and I also need to add a button (I decided to attach the button with duct tape and the shape required to do that looked remarkably like a Star Wars TIE fighter).

The shirt needs the most work, but that's just attaching Velcro and finishing the silver vest.

I'm mostly focusing on accessories now, because my dress is pretty much done except for a whole lot of stars which aren't completely necessary. I'm trying to hit all of the Honorable Mentions categories: Best Purse, Best Corsage, Best Shoes, Best Tie, Best Jewelry, and Best Prop. Although those are only for the entries not in the Top Ten, I hope that being great in all of the accessories they expect us to have will give us an edge.

The tie is done except for Velcro to fasten it (since last I heard), but I didn’t snap a picture of the design.

For the prop, most people do a cane of some sort, and we'll probably do that too if we can find a cane to use. For now, I made a fan. You can see in the pictures how I made the staves myself out of wooden skewers and popsicle sticks by making a tube of black duct tape arount the popsicle stick that I filled with hot glue to stick the skewer into. It took me about 4 hours and I finished off another black roll. I've lost count of those again, and I'm just going to have to sit down one day with Alex and do a mental count of how many rolls each project took us. I wonder if experimenting and mess-ups count as well...

I haven't figured out what to do about jewelry yet, but I made myself a pair of duct tape faux lashes and yes, I plan to wear them.

Oh! And I also finished my dress collar. I'll put all the pictures down below, including one of my purse. Note: The pictures of the dress collar and the front of the fan are in black and white. I'm not giving all of it away yet...

Completed shoes!

The shoes are done! I've talked about them before, so here's the picture. They're mostly black with some purple plus silver accents and stars.

Corsage

Well, I finished the corsage! Thank goodness for spring break...



I've never had a corsage before, so I have no idea how they're actually attached although it probably wouldn't work with duct tape. I drew inspiration from my watch and made a strip of aqua duct tape attached to a clasp made out of thin wire. After making sure it fit properly, I attached it to the rose and duct tape ribbons by sticking the wire left over from the bottom of the rose through both the ribbons and the bracelet, folding it over to secure it, then taping it down.



The last picture is of the boutonniere and corsage together. That's at least 10 hours of work right there...

Boutonniere

I've gotten way ahead of myself here. I designed a corsage and boutonniere just based on the idea of a "white rose," and I meant to show Alex, but I got restless and made the boutonniere in two sittings. I like it, so hopefully he does :P

I still need to make my corsage, but it won't be so hard now that I know how to make the rose. Cutting the petals out and sticking on the silver lining is the toughest part, and I used 20 petals for this one. Actually, cutting the serrated edge on the leaves was time consuming as well...

It took me a couple tries to get the right size for the petals, but going from short in the center to tall on the outside worked. There's a wire up the center of each one so I can bend them into a realistic shape. There's a wire up each of the leaves as well. To make the "baby breath" stars, I folded duct tape over about half an inch of wire and cut a star around the wire.

If present trend continues, I'll be finished before the week's up, which is good because I'll be out of town starting Thursday to do some last minute college visiting...

Oo, shiny...

We bought more duct tape today and I remembered that we're actually supposed to be keeping track of how many rolls and hours go into this thing. So I'm going to be going back through the whole blog and see/remember how many rolls we've used so far.

We've finished taping the shirt together and got halfway done taping the vest. It's really shiny...

Earlier this week, I made and decorated my purse. I'll probably add more to it, but it's fine for now... I also finished adding colors to the dress and have started to add stars to it. It took about two rolls of purple and half a roll of aqua. There is some white, but not enough to mention...

My goal for this week is to design and get started on the boutonniere and corsage.

(13 black, 7 chrome, 7 purple, 1/2 aqua)

Pretty far along

Well, a bunch of stuff has happened since my last post. The jacket is pretty much finished, at least, I can't remember anything else that needs to be done with it, besides getting the lapels to stay down. The pants are put together, we just need to adjust them. My dress is all put together and fitted, I've worked out the zipper situation with more duct tape, and I'm halfway done adding colors.

Me and Alex met yesterday and started working on his shirt. The pattern was pretty easy and we got far in 4 hours. We cut out the DTC and taped most of it together, we just need to finish taping up a sleeve and the side, then we'll add a zipped down the front. After we finish that, we'll tape a silver faux vest on top of it.

I'll try to work up some sketches to post for you guys :)

(13 black, 6 chrome, 5 purple)

Who Decided How To Spell "Boutonniere"?

Well, the tux is coming along nicely (And don't worry, he doesn't usually look like that :P). We got together with our friend Amanda again, cuz she actually knows what she's doing, and pretty much got the basic tux coming together. We still need to attach the sleeves, attach the sides to the back, and add a collar. And a pocket, too.

The pants are about halfway done, I'd estimate. We need to get a zipper for it before we can move forward, though. We did have him try the two pant legs on to make sure they fit, and it didn't look half bad. This thing's gonna look amazing when we're done with it...

So update on the dress and my checklist; I did do a lot of work on the neckline and I have the front half all finished, but without the silver collar decoration. The outer edges of the back are done, but I still need to do the cutout continuing from the front. I've also put the zipper in and done a lot of work with the form and how it fits. The duct tape around the zipper won't stick, though. I only sewed the zipper to the cloth because I didn't want to break the sewing machine, but I'm going to have to do something extra to get the duct tape to stick to the cloth. I'll probably glue it with something...

I think I'm going to need a bigger purse as well. The first one was good for a trial run, but it's barely big enough to fit my phone. I'll also do more research on the styles of purses that are out there. And I still need to put stars on my other shoe...

New addition for the list; get a workable design for the corsage and boutonniere...

Progress continues!!!

Yay!!! All the pieces are cut out!!

I went over to my partner's house and we laid out the DTC and patterns and decided which ones we actually needed. We discarded the lining and facing because we could do that by duct taping the inside of the clothing, and we also decided to leave off most of the pockets for simplicity's sake. In the end, we barely had enough cloth to fit everything, which was suprising considering that we had 5 yards of the stuff. My dress only took 4 yards and I had plenty left over.

So, I still need to finish putting stars on my shoes and trying to figure out how we're going to get duct tape to curve smoothly. The purse is presentable, but I still need to decorate it. I also need to finish the neckline on my dress and add a zipper...........

Purse! pt. 2

Once I get started, there's no stopping me...

Since I had the DTC intended for the purse lying around, I went ahead and made it today. It didn't turn out exactly like I designed it, but I'm still quite happy with the result. The strap was complicated, and it took a few practice strips and experiments before I finished that. It's all one whole strip of duct tape, folded down on itself in a certain way and partially unfolded and stretched out... Perhaps I'll draw up a chart of how I did it, it turned out looking pretty nice...

I still need to finish my shoes, and I'm hoping my partner can come over tomorrow and we can cut out the pieces for his tux. I've also figured out what I'm doing for the hairpiece and the corsage, so I'm pretty much on track except for finishing the neckline on my dress. I actually hadn't planned on doing a lot of this until spring break...

Purse! And other accessories...

I was doodling today and I came up with a workable design for the purse. Simple enough, but classy. I also went through the scraps left over from my dress and found a sizable piece that will definitely be big enough for it. I'm planning on using a shaped wire hanger wrapped in duct tape for the handles.

For now, I think I'll be working on getting everything we'll need to a presentable state before we move on with the decorating. My dress is almost there, I still need to sew the zipper in and finish cutting out the neckline, but after that it'll look like a dress. I still need to cut out the pieces for the tux and tape those together, but after that both of our outfits will be presentable and I can breath a bit easier.

I'm thinking of ways to fasten the tux, particularly the pants. I think a zipper and a hook-and-eye fastening will do the trick. Hook-and-eyes will probably work for the shirt and jacket too...

Still noting set for my hair. I've had this vague idea of an updo with something mimicking a smaller planetary ring, or maybe something more like an astroid belt. Like the laurel wreaths of Greece (see picture) except with stars instead of leaves. I just came up with that while typing and it sounds pretty good. I'll keep y'all posted...

Much progress...

My partner and I have been getting together the last couple Sundays. We decided to get a pattern for his suit (because we know next to nothing about making a tux) so we picked up a couple patterns at Joann Fabric and Crafts one week and finished cutting them all out the next week. Hopefully I can find time to cut them out of the DTC so we'll be ready to tape them together the next time we work on it.

On my to-do list:

1) Finish putting stars on the shoes. One of them is done already, I just need to remind myself to do the other one when I have a spare moment. It really doesn't take that long, I'm just forgetful...

2) Experiment with the design on the tux. Our idea is to put shooting stars on the tux jacket, so I need to figure out how to make long, curving strips of duct tape when the curve is too wide to cut out of a single piece. It'll just take some messing around with, I'm sure it won't be a problem. It just needs to be done...

3) Start thinking about hairstyle and accessories. For the hair, I don't want it to be too outlandish, but I do want it to be more than a few stars bobby-pinned into an updo. Maybe some kind of star halo or even a tiara-style headdress? And the purse. I haven't even started designing the purse. I have a feeling that'll end up being the thing I'm least concerned with when we get down to the last few weeks...

I should really get a solid date for the prom we're going to. I know it's in the middle of May somewhere, but it would be nice to know for sure...

Why did it take me so long the first time?

My new partner came over today and we taped up the cloth. All 5 yards of it. In three hours.

So that's done. We did run out of duct tape about 1 row away from being finished, but it's basically done. I can't believe it took me so long to do just 4 yards...

He left his tux here, so sometime during this week I can draw up a pattern for the next time we get together.

(12 black, 6 chrome, 1 purpe)

Big Update! Steps 6 and 7? Idk anymore...

The dress is all put together. Here's a pic of most of the pieces before we taped them together by peeling the edges of the duct tape away from the cloth and interlocking the two pieces (layering from bottom up: cloth 1, cloth 2, duct tape 1, duct tape 2. The top layer of duct tape stuck to the duct tape directly under it, which stuck to the cloth that originally went with the top layer of duct tape. Hopefully that makes sense...). After that part of the "sewing" was done and smoothed out as much as possible, we took a long piece of black duct tape and went over the whole seam top to bottom. It's suprisingly secure. I've also adjusted the dress with darts around the waist and bust by pinching up the extra duct tape cloth (Duct tape cloth will now be refered to as DTC because I'm tired of typing out the whole thing), folding it over, and sticking it down with a long piece of duct tape. And in case anyone's wondering; yes, I did finish the dress form/mannequin thing, but I don't have a good picture of it since my dress has been hanging on it and my sisters stuffed it to the breaking point trying to make it look "realistic" (fat). :P

I'm working on the fancier stuff now, mostly the neckline. The neckline is an unusual original design, and when I'd worked on it a bit, I realized I'd have to move the planned zipper from the back to the side, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get into the dress. I've also evened out the bottom hem with a good pair of scissors (so much easier than working with normal cloth!) and added a curving slit (triangular cutout? wedge shaped clothless spot?) that ends right above my left knee. I'll be adding a bunch of stars there too, to circle around for the train.

Unfortunately I've had to find another partner, but the good news is within a week I found a friend of mine who's willing to give it a shot. We're going to meet on Saturday to work on his tux design and start making his DTC, so we'll see how it goes!

(I'll say one black to tape it together and one purple for the neckline, so 6 blacks, 6 chromes, and 1 purple)