Some years back, my sisters were in town to celebrate my birthday. In a shop window, we saw a string of origami dresses displayed on   a clotheseline.  I was utterly enchanted. I had to make one. Or two.    I found a great tutorial online and went on an origami dress kick for a few weeks, folding and embellishing dresses from my stash of art papers.  I ended up making so many that I could have opened up     a dress shop for flat fashionistas. Instead, I shared the bounty with my tiling friends.

Kicking around ideas for this week’s Grandlife readers, I recalled the fun I had making origami dresses. Yep. I found the crafter whose instructions I had followed. Christy at Inklings & Yarns has a great tutorial showing you, fold by fold, how to turn a 5″ x 5″ piece of paper (or 10″x 10″) into a fun frock. If you have a budding McQueen or Chanel, this would be a great way to spend an afternoon or more.  For some inspiration here’s the latest from Paris’ Haute Couture Fashion Week.  My fave is this stunner from Christian Dior.

As for paper?  You can use anything from grocery bags to the comics pages to gift wrap. Michaels has great pads of paper in coordinated colors and patterns. Or feast online; there are oodles of paper sites that will knock your socks off. Embellish your dresses with stickers, puffy markers, glitter pens, stick-on rhinestones. Or make a few, string them together with tiny clothespins, and you’ve got a cute wall decoration. Make a larger one (pretty in pink on the left was made from a sheet of  twelve-inch-square paper) and frame it as a new baby gift. Or do what I did with the one below — fold a dress and tape it to a notebook. Oooh la la…