55 Paper Dresses

Remember when I told you about The Sketchbook Tour last June?  

The Sketchbook Project, hosted by the Brooklyn Art Library, is a collection of sketchbooks that tours the country and can be checked out like library books.
To have my book included in the tour, it had to be postmarked by January 15th.  Because I like to wait until the last possible minute to do just about everything, I started working approximately one week beforehand (even though I've had the book since June) and finished about thirty minutes before the post office closed.
That's how I do things.

Even though this event is called The Sketchbook Project, I enjoy cutting and gluing just as much as drawing, so I decided to do it all....maybe not the best idea if you have only a week to complete a project, but it worked out and I learned my lesson about waiting until the last minute (no I didn't: I'll probably do the same thing next year).


I drew a cute little paper doll and crafted her tiny outfits from paper scraps. The finished result was fifty-five paper dresses (hence the title) and a collection of paper shoes, tights, hats, and other little accessories.

The theme chosen for my sketchbook was 'Chronicle' because I like projects that tell a story.  The fifty-five paper dresses tell a story about me and chronicle my life at this moment.  For dress material, I used paint samples (in shades of tangerine, of course), a paycheck stub, wrapping paper from Christmas, a clothing tag from Goodwill, the package from my favorite tea (Orange Spice), and dozens of other items.  The book is almost like a time capsule.  After swapping the white pages out for old book pages, I glued the paper dresses inside and sent it away to New York!

Here are the fifty-five paper dresses (including the 3 on the cover):