Elizabeth Rasmuson was no ordinary junior high school girl. Back in 2010, she came up with a brilliant plan that put at the center of that year’s prom. Prom is often thought of as one of the high marks of any student’s life, and Elizabeth was determined to make it a memorable one. Rather than trying to fit in with her peers, she opted for a path that was harder but one that would eventually show off how unique she was. She decided to make her own prom dress. While this in and of itself would’ve been enough to impress anybody in today’s age where the majority of students buy or rent, Elizabeth went one step further. She decided to make it out of chewing gum wrappers.
The Plan
To start out, Rasmuson made a detailed plan for the dress to know exactly what she needed to do. Afterwards, she’d go out and buy gum. She got help from her classmates and prom date by giving them the gum to chew while she kept hold of all of the wrappers. She said that one of the most time consuming and exhausting parts of putting the dress together was carefully flattening out the wrappers and cutting the ends off of each of them. In order to give the dress some added strength, she combined it with an iron-on interfacing and quilting. Afterwards she applied a vinyl finish in order to keep the wrappers from cracking from movement.
Enlisting Help
Putting together this prom dress was a tall order. She worked for over a year on it and even had to enlist the help of her prom date to assist. At the end of it all, she isn’t even aware of how many pieces of chewing gum wrappers were used, as she stopped counting after getting to two hundred. In addition to a dress made of chewing gum wrappers, she also made a matching one for her date.
The dress and matching vest turned out to be absolutely adorable. The vest is tri colored with a sea green, white, and blue and the vest is a checkerboard pattern. While some may have rolled their eyes when they originally heard of the plan, the actual dress turned out to be beautiful and will surely turn heads at any prom.
