Australian woman uses bread clasps to create wedding dress

The mantra of environmentalism has always been to reduce, recycle, reuse and one Australian woman has taken that to heart by getting married in a dress made completely out of used bread clips. Not only did she look fabulous, but the dress only cost $36 plus the time and effort to make it.

While many people in the U.S. are familiar with twist ties for bread, these are the plastic clasps that many companies use to keep the bread fresh. Stephanie Watson has been collecting plastic clasps since she was in high school with the intention of one day creating a wedding dress. It started out as mostly a joke, but as time went on, people started helping her add to the collection.

She met the man of her dreams and took her collection, along with a little help from a baker relative, and compiled more than 10,000 clasps to make the dress that she affectionately called Nadine. She even chronicled the making of it on her blog called Constructing Nadine.

Dresses made from odd materials such as duct tape are not that uncommon. Many are easily created, but the time and effort required for Watson’s dress shows her commitment to the task and to the environment.

Each of the 10,000 clasps were sewn together by Watson and included mostly white, but also incorporated red, green and other colors. She used them to create patterns in her custom dress. While most women are going after Vera Wang, Watson was looking more toward a signature Butternut.

When it was all said and done, the dress took more than 300 hours to make and weighed 15 pounds.

This is a great, if not extreme, example of the simple act of reusing. Many people simply throw away items they deem useless because they were already used for their original purpose. Watson’s dress goes to show that with a little ingenuity and imagination even the most basic item can become a work of art.

Photo courtesy of http://stephanielouwatson.blogspot.com.au/