Making a grass skirt for pennies

A few weeks ago, Tommy's school was having Hawaiian day.  People wear all sorts of crazy get-ups on 'spirit days'.  I only had a floppy flowered hat, but Tommy wanted more.  The problem was, I had no spare money to spend at the time, so we had to get creative.  He decided he needed a grass skirt!  Yes, a moment of "ohhh, gawd...is he gonna get laughed out of class?!?" did cross my mind, but he was insistent.

Since he's only in 1st grade, I figured he'd be okay with his choice.  Besides, our school has lots of spirit.  Even the 6th grade boys were dressed up, so all is well.

Anyway, you may or may not know that in my spare time, I am a Stampin' UP demonstrator.  Every time I get a shipment, I get this big long piece of brown paper that is perforated every 10 inches or so for easy tearing on the packer's part.  I've been saving it up, wanting to find a use for it and I think I've finally found it!  You could just use some of that brown paper that comes on a roll.  I started by making a crude measurement by wrapping the paper around my son twice, then tore it off at that length.  I then zig-zag folded it and smoothed it down as flat as I could make it like so: 

I then folded it into thirds, leaving the edge where the waist would be, sticking out and away from the area I intended on cutting.  I cut at about every 3/4" or so. Looking back, 1/2" would have looked better.

I then attempted to cut it into strips with my guillotine cutter, having to stop before it cut all the way through.  In all reality, it was too thick and I had to sort of chop chop chop to get it to go through even part of it.

I ended up having to cut it the rest of the way with scissors.  The guillotine did save me hand a bunch of cramps from the scissors though.  Did you know it's impossible to take a picture of your hands while actually using scissors?  I'm holding right-handed scissors in place with my left hand while taking the picture.  Like you just had to see those scissors in order to know where to cut, right?!

I then unfolded it and it looked pretty good!

But some pieces were sticking down extra long and I have no clue why.  I had all the edges lined up.  Maybe they broke off, no clue.  So, I just gave it a quick hair cut.

Since there is a perforation that could easily come apart every 10", I decided I had better tape them for reinforcement.  It's hard to see, but I just taped them front and back.  This will help to hold the layers together, too.

Then I had to deal with how to make a 'waist' out of this thing!  I lined up my edges and folded the end over about an inch, inch and a half, intending on making a tube for my jute to go through.

 I cut a piece of jute about two feet longer than the width of my skirt, then lay it down in the valley of the fold.

Then I folded the paper over twice to encase the jute.

And taped it down along the inside.

Because the jute could slide back and forth, I decided to put a couple of staples in to hold it in place.

I then pushed the staples flat so they wouldn't poke/scratch my son.  I then put a piece of tape over them for added protection.

I held up my new grass skirt and it was lookin' pretty good!

I wrapped it around Tommy twice and tied it with the jute and it looked great!

Tommy gave it a hula-hula test for good measure!

He said everyone liked his skirt at school and no one teased him.  He had a fun day...

until he got in trouble for hula-hula-ing too much and disrupted the class and got it taken away, lol.

We actually still have the skirt for another occasion, if needed.  I feel good about recycling what would be trash and spent only a few pennies on the whole thing!  What kind of trash have you turned into treasure?  Fun, isn't it?

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