Think you have seen toilet paper wedding dresses before? You’ve never seen anything like this.
Every once in a while, you will come across a gorgeous wedding dress that happens to be made from toilet paper. One mom from North Richland Hills, Texas, has taken this idea to the next level by boiling the toilet paper to create the gorgeous gown.
Amber Mills is a full-time stay-at-home mom who somehow has still found time to create a gorgeous wedding dress – out of toilet paper.
This isn’t any old toilet paper, either. She is using pink Charmin brand toilet paper from the 1970s combined with more recent toilet paper of the typical white.
Toilet paper doesn’t seem like it would be sturdy enough to create a dress, but Mills has discovered the method. She rolls it out in strips, combining it with tape and glue to create a material resembling fabric.
Check out her method at 0:28 to see for yourself how she turns this everyday household staple into a workable material for a wedding dress. Then, she uses a needle and some pink thread to sew together the end result, just like you would any other piece of clothing.
For Mills, the wedding dress isn’t just a fun project. It’s a chance to feel as if she is useful again.
Mills has multiple sclerosis, and as she told USA Today,
“I couldn’t work anymore and I started to get, you know, really depressed.”
She was browsing the internet one day when that changed. Mills spotted a contest to see who would be able to create the best dress out of toilet paper. She immediately felt inspired and as if this would be her chance to change her outlook.
She decided to enter the contest because:
“With the multiple sclerosis and all of the health issues I have, I had become, you know, emotionally defeated in life and just had a lot of issues.”
All this pain and uncertainty was a big change for Mills, who used to be a Marine.
To win, Mills decided to do more than just leave the toilet paper in strips.
She discovered how to boil it down into a material to use on the bodice, a technique she shows off at 0:50. First, Mills takes the cardboard roll out of the toilet paper, then puts the rest of the roll in boiling water.
Once it has boiled, she strains the toilet paper and blends it with plenty of glue using a handheld mixer:
“Just like it’s mashed potatoes.”
The next part is incredibly time-consuming. Mills sits down with the boiled toilet paper and carefully places it into a mold, as seen at 1:40, to create lace. Every single little piece made using this method takes her a full six hours to complete.
All those months spent working on her toilet paper wedding dress came to fruition on picture day.
You can see all of the delicate lace details on the bodice made with her unique method of boiling toilet paper. These details seamlessly complement the ruffles she carefully sewed from toilet paper along the lower portion of the dress. The end result, seen at 1:51, is truly beautiful – and doesn’t look anything like toilet paper.
Just take a look at all those ruffles Mills had to hand sew to create the train of this gorgeous dress.
Mills did not end up winning the top prize in the wedding dress contest, but she did earn third place, a high honor.
However, the most important thing for Mills is her ability to create such a gorgeous dress, which has made her feel useful again.
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