The Avant Garde Wedding Veil

 So, while at my friends wedding last month, I came up with this Avant Garde Veil idea. Maybe its the Sci-fi geek in me over thinking creative future concepts, I don't know. But I had a "vision" nonetheless, what if a bride had a veil that was like a thin tulle bird cage as she walked down the isle. The "cage veil", if you will, would start at the waist and go over her head ( with her arms inside) and would stay until she got to the alter. Once at the alter, the veil can be peeled like flower petals and inverted so that the tulle can create an extra sheer layer to the lower half of the wedding gown.
I pitched the idea to friends who said, I should try this.. I did have a clear picture however, communicating this was.. challenging.. haha and my sketching is well, poor. Also, as you can tell from my sketch, I'm not a designer.

I started by thinking about how I was going to start this project and remembered back to one Easter where my family made paper mache baskets, only we replaced paper with yarn. Then the veil idea started to come together on a mini scale.
This project highlights a mini- veil from my neck to the top of my head to test and to see if a larger one would work , maybe utilizing the same materials so that it can eventually look kinda like the one in my sketch.

I used the following:
- 2 yards of Tulle and Aleene's Stiffen Quick from PS Fabrics & Crafts in NYC
-12 inch latex Balloons from Party City
-Fabric scissors
- a small plastic bowl
- 2 brown Trader Joes bags

 To start, I cut 1/4 of a yard of tulle and cut one Trader Joe's bag into a pattern of a giant ( about 15 inch) petal. Next I blew a balloon up. Then the fun begins! Pattern cutting! I utilized all of the cut tulle to create "petals".
After all of your petals are cut, you begin to pour about 2 cups of Stiffen Quick into a plastic bowl, which you will use to dip the petals into. Following, using the soaked petals,  you will cover your inflated balloon.  The final step in the Mache-ing project will to place the petal covered balloon onto the top of an open brown paper grocery bag so that when the starch dries, it doesn't get everywhere.
Below are videos of the next steps.
- petal cutting
- dipping the tulle petals into a small bowl of Stiffen Quick
- placing the petals onto the balloon ( Mache-ing)
- placing the covered balloon onto the paperbag

Though the Stiffen Quick solution suggests a 1 hour dry time, I waited 3 days to ensure the solution was completely dry. The next step is to pop the balloon. Surprisingly, the solution wasn't at all stuck to the balloon as it looked like it was.

Balloon pop was a success! I cut about a 6 inch diameter at the bottom of the sphere and 2 slits up two opposing sides so that I can slip the veil over my head.

Success!

 

The unveiling was pretty smooth, peeling off the petal layers wasn't rough but there were a few starch flakes that fell but they weren't enough to cause concern. I'm so happy that this mini-veil worked out! 

My takeaway for the next time, an actual veil is that I will try to starch only the edges of the fabric so that the unveiling is a bit more smoother. 

Now where am I going to find a 3 foot balloon?