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Effie Trinket Inspired Party Dress


For Halloween, I found this lavender clown wig in my closet, stuck some holiday decorations in it, covered my face in glitter and wore my birthday dress from the year before...which was actually my wedding dress, re-worked. I don't know what I was trying to be, other than dressed up, but someone decided I was Effie Trinket a la the Hunger Games, so I just went with it. 

I throw a big party every year for my birthday, and always wear something over the top (because why not?). This year I decided to keep the Effie Trinket inspiration going and make a dress inspired by the Capitol City crowd.

On a budget, of course.



I found a deep blue version of this dress at a thrift store for $5.99, with the original tags still on it, marked down from $90.00. (I had pictures of the original dress, but all was lost when my phone exploded)




I bought a bundle of teal holiday poinsettias for $6.50, originally marked at $13.99.






Tulle is basically my favorite party dress accessory ever. Every dress is a party dress with tulle. I bought two rolls, at approximately $2.50 each.





White feather butterflies and glitter teal butterfly floral picks. The butterflies were the most expensive, at about $1 each.





I already had the butterfly punch. The glitter paper cost $1.99 per sheet.






I basically scrunched tulle up and sewed it around the neckline of the dress, making it as poofy as possible. I sewed strips of tulle to the skirt of the dress, making that a little bit poofy, as well.





My sewing skills are terrible. I hot glued the poinsettia leaves, butterflies and floral picks onto the dress, hiding bad sewing and using the tulle to cover the glue marks and anchor everything in. I glued myself to myself approximately 17 times in the process.




I glued the paper butterflies absolutely everywhere.




Glitter, fake eyelashes, fake hair, and more butterflies. I ended up taking the fake hair out - in an outfit that was designed to to be over the top, the fake hair made it TOO over the top.





 More glitter. Our house looks like a glitter bomb exploded, but the dogs are feeling very shiny and pretty.




 My dress held up all night...from posing for pictures at 7 pm....




to dancing on chairs at midnight...





...to floating in cages at 4 am...(???)


The total cost for the dress was just under $40 and almost everything on it can  (and will!) be re-used for other projects. Not a bad life for a party dress, right?

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