Start with a simple dress, jacket, and tie -- nothing you'll want to wear again in its original form. Have fun with the wide selection of silk and plastic leaves and flowers that are available; you need not follow our choices.

Tools and Materials

• Dress
• Jacket
• Tie
• Wide Selection of Silk or Plastic Leaves or Flowers (we used Silk Spiderwort Leaves and Plastic Maiden-Hair Ferns)
• Hot Glue
• Scissors
• Safety Pins
• 2-inch length of slender ribbon
• Bobby pins

Dress How-To

We cut the sleeves off a thrift-store dress and covered it by hot-gluing silk spiderwort leaves interspersed with plastic maiden-hair ferns. Put a dab of hot glue at the base of each leaf, leaving tip free; start gluing from top of dress. Do a design with the leaves, let vines crawl up your dress, or go for colors and patterns with roses, daisies, or flower petals.

Gentleman's Tie How-To

First knot tie on wearer's neck, then cut through in back; use a safety pin to fasten in back for easy removal. We chose silk French-smilax vine, and hot-glued it onto the tie.

Jacket How-To

We hot-glued plastic cedar branches onto the body and plastic maidenhair fern onto lapels and pockets. To make hat from an extra-large leaf, make a tiny double loop from a 2-inch length of slender ribbon: Bring both ends to center of ribbon and glue in place; then hot-glue ribbon loops to back of leaf. Attach with bobby pins through loops.

See More: 8 No-Sew Costumes.