A Look Back: A few more dresses from Speakeasy 2.0

Molly is modeling the floor length blue dress with garbage bag flower accents. Kait is modeling the shorter purple ruched party dress.

Above is the detail on the back of Kait's dress. There is a braided chrome band around the outside. Both dresses use velcro closures.

A Look Back: Warped Tour 2009

I used Electric Blue duct tape and Chrome Duct tape. I hand cut all of the tiger stripes. This is probably one of my favorite dresses because I love animal print and Electric Blue duct tape.


Here one model is wearing it at the Ingenuity Cleveland Speakeasy 2.0

A Look Back: AP Tour 2009 The Fall Ball

In short, we won Best Dressed and got to go back stage for the show :-)

All of these letters were hand cut from duct tape.

My sister and I before the show

A Look Back: Winter Formal 2008 (Saint Joesph's Academy)

This dress is made of Flamingo Pink duct tape, force flex trash bags, and a chrome strap. Also, my flowers are made of duct tape. This dress made a reappearance when shooting some photos with Robert Banks in the late summer of 2010. The following pictures were taken by Robert.

The "Once it hits your lips" dress and the winter formal dress
(As you can see, the strap is missing...it came off and I didn't have time to make another)

A Look Back: Winter Formal 2008 (Berea)

This is the dress I wore to 2008 Winter Formal. This dress has a lot of sentimental value because it was my first official "date" with my current boyfriend. The day I first met him, about 7 days before, I asked him to my dance and asked "Is it okay if I wear duct tape?" and he said yes to both. Little did he know what he was getting into with my duct tape addiction. I used Teal colored tape and created a white ruffle on the bottom with duct tape and the white hearts are also cut out of duct tape. Sometimes when I'm looking for consistency, I will use a die cut machine for scrapbooking. Other times, if it is a larger design, I will hand cut my details.

A Look Back: Winter Formal 2008 (St. Ignatius)

Since I just sent my little sister off on her own winter formal last night, I feel that it is appropriate to post one of my winter formal dresses. This dress was the 3rd winter formal I went to in 2008. I made it the day before the dance, as usual. I made a basic halter dress with a black waist band, and added black ruffles on the neckline and at the bottom. This dress was also worn in 2010 by the lovely Fiona at Fashion Week Cleveland at Ingenuity Fest.

A Look Back: Family Force 5

I find it truly amazing what dancing and a mosh pit will do to a dress that seems indestructible. Anyone who knows me would tell you that I have an unhealthy love to dance like a maniac and mosh. While my moshing days are coming to a close after a few too many softball size bruises and passing out, my dancing days are far from over. 2009 was the year of Family Force 5. I could not get enough and I think I attended 4 of their shows within a year. This dress is one of my later dresses where I learned the beauty of garbage bags and had constructed this dress within the 24 hours before the show.

The dress is based off of Family Force 5's song "Rip it up" which you can listen to below:





The song itself is about essentially dancing crazy and "ripping up" and "tearing up" the dance floor so I thought why not make that literal and take a dance floor (like the one below) and rip it up.

I created a bunch of brightly colored squares of duct tape and pieced them together. On the top of the dress, I cut out with a craft blade the words "Rip It Up" with the "p" mimicking the lightning bolt in the logo. After the concert, I hung around to get it signed by the band. Promptly after having it signed, I covered the signatures with clear packaging tape to preserve them. As you can tell from the picture, I was dancing so much I looked pretty rough though being front row and dancing like crazy in that small club was one of the best concert experiences of my life. Now after 4 different FF5 outfits, they remembered me as "Duct Tape Girl" when I saw them at Cedar Point/.


Rip It Up Lyrics:
I saw you strut
Into the room
My heart started pumpin'
When you broke out them moves

Your heels dug in
Straight through the floor
You're a machine, baby
Seek and destroy

[Pre Chorus 1:]
She must be crazy
She's got that feeling
Look out now she's a psycho killer

[Chorus 1:]
The dance floor is shredded to pieces
The way you rip it up has got my heart rate increasin'
The dance floor is obliterated
The way you tear it up has got my soul liberated

[Chorus 2:]
Rip it up

Rip it up
Don't stop until it's torn up
Tear it up
Tear it up
It's just the fate of the dance floor

[Verse 2:]
She cuts a rug
Just like a razor
Then burns it down
Like an incinerator

She's a slayer
And it don't phase her
She's from the future
She's a terminator

[Pre Chorus 2:]
Just like a chainsaw
Her teeth cut in
Watch out now here she goes again

A Look Back: SJA Homecoming 2007

Oh goodness. My early dresses still astound me. I have a few earlier dresses but am unable to find pictures. I have a couple from 2006, but the pictures are awful. If I can find them, I'll take new pictures. Anyways, This dress was worn for SJA Homecoming Fall 2007. What I find absolutely hysterical is that

a) I was at Berea already, therefore I was going to my prior, all-girls school, homecoming with one of my friends.
b) Everyone else was wearing black or very dark dresses.

In short, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

This dress was another 100% duct tape dress and therefore very stiff. I started using just plain gray duct tape and covered it with chrome duct tape, hence the Chipotle Burrito wrapper look.

Still, since this dress was 100% tape it was super durable and I was able to wear it again to see Panic! at the Disco the following summer after they dropped the ! from their name.

Working on a New Line!!!

Hey everyone!
I will be working this spring with Fashion Week Cleveland again and this time I figured "Hey, why not combine duct tape and literature in a fantastic explosion of creativity and a visual orgasm!?!?"
As promotion for FWC and a potential wearable art fashion show next year, I will be (hopefully) attending the pre-parties and also (maybe) Cuyahoga County Public Libraries during the days of the parties. Everything is still in the works but I'm very excited. I have as of right now 5 designs on the drawing board and would love to hear some input.
I will be basing my ideas off literary works (novels, poems, authors, etc). As of right now I have a "The Raven" by Poe dress, a "Leaves of Grass" by Whitman dress, "The Inferno" by Dante dress, and a few other rough ideas.
Look for updates in the near future and once I refine my designs, I'll try to post them on here. Other than that, enjoy this video of MCLars "Mr. Raven"

So I broke my duct tape hiatus on Sunday...

After Ingenuity, I really needed a break from duct tape. This semester has really been a trying one for me simply because my one class pretty much turned into a part time job. I absolutely love the class but with the whole 18 credit hours plus FYE plus working plus getting observation hours in, my entire life was turned upside down. Observation officially ended last Friday, November 5th. So when else is a better time to get into "comfortable clothes" and work out some of that final relief?

This past Sunday, I went to see a concert at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights. The people playing were Austin Gibbs, The Downtown Fiction (I LOVE THEM!), Mod Sun, Stereo Skyline (like them too!), and The Summer Set (here's a video I took of them from mid 2009 "She's Got the Rhythm") (I STILL have to upload more videos from the Spring AP tour this year!)

Since I like both The Summer Set and The Downtown Fiction A LOT, I decided Sunday MORNING that I was going to make my dress for that evening. As a basic description I made a one shouldered shorter purple party dress with the words "Love Like This" for the Summer Set on the side and "I Just Wanna Run" for The Downtown Fiction on the back. I used white and chrome duct tape for the lettering.

I had Mary (my sister, the other girl in the picture) help me place the duct tape lettering on me because I did not take the dress off at all that day because as soon as it was done, it was time to get ready and go!

I absolutely LOVE wearing dresses to concerts! During my hiatus, I've been wearing "normal" clothes and I just never felt like myself, almost to the point where I was uncomfortable. It's bizarre to think that normal clothes at a concert can make me feel awkward! It's really nice to be able to say "Yes! it IS duct tape AND I made it myself!" and it's these little moments where someone asks me for a picture or asks if they can touch it (you would not BELIEVE how many people ask me that!) where I feel accomplished and it reminds me of just one of the MANY reasons I do this! I really want to make something for a band besides flowers for the next show I go to as a fan gift. I haven't decided quite yet what to make but I'm sure I'll think of something. :-)

With Brian from Stereo Skyline

With Josh from The Summer Set

With Cameron from The Downtown Fiction

The first dress I ever made...

...weighed a TON! Pretty much since it was the first dress I ever made, I was just playing it by ear because this whole duct tape thing has been pretty much self taught. I don't use patterns, I don't sew things, I just tape.The skull belt was added to this one just to break up the stripes and is not duct tape. Basically, this is how it all started: I made a solid grey duct tape dress, then covered it in Funky Flamingo and Aqua. Right before the concert, I also added a chrome star burst on the bust and cut out the words "Men Women And Children" and stuck them around the bottom. This is not one whole dress but rather two pieces. This thing was THICK! I had at least 4 layers of duct tape and let me tell you, duct tape on duct tape already has the tendency to act cone-like, so this was a mega cone. I did get to meet the members of Men Women and Children (unfortunately they are no longer together) and they signed my dress.

Find more artists like Men Women & Children at MySpace Music

Since this dress, as you can probably tell, everything has spun out of control.

It's been a crazy ride thus far...

Hello all,

So it's been a week and a half since Ingenuity which was a blasty-blast and now I'm just starting to get resettled into my old life. Prior to Ingenuity we (as in myself and Fashion Week Cleveland) had been having weekly photo shoots and it was just crazy. It was a ton of fun but also pretty much turned my world upside down for a while. I was making new dresses, some of which we not even worn at Ingenuity because of lack of models, trying to attempt to drive to and from Kent a few times a week, and be an honors student with 18 credit hours, work, and assisting 2 classes. It really put my system into a state of shock and I am just now in the recoop phase. I am going to try and cut back on the extra "stuff" for now and focus on my classes. I may continue to do dresses but on a much more scaled back way. I hope to be back up and running ASAP.

Sarah "Sadie" Nedbalski

Ingenuity Fest: September 24th

This was last night at Ingenuity Festival Cleveland. From Left to Right is Claire Macosko in the shorter companion piece of my Butterfly Prom Dress, Myself in the Ingenuity Dress, Mary Nedbalski in the Army Dress of the ongoing Salute your Soldiers collection, and Fiona Gao in the Paint the Club Red dress.

Since we were there with Fashion Week Cleveland promoting the wearable art show, we decided to take a picture with the Fashion Week Cleveland sign.

There will be more pictures coming later and also pictures of older dresses as well.

With Love,

Sarah "Sadie" Nedbalski

My First Post

Hi. My name is Sarah "Sadie" Nedbalski.

I go by either Sarah or Sadie, whichever you prefer. There are too many people named "Sarah" out there (it was the sixth most popular girls name the year I was born)

I am a designer of wearable art primarily made out of duct tape, trash bags, newspaper, and contact paper. I am also currently looking to expand my media with which I work with. I love to create and design, though I am not a Fashion major. I am going for a degree in Secondary English Education at Kent State University, where I am currently a Junior. I have been featured on the cover of The Daily Kent Stater and also on Fox 8 News.

I have been making dresses out of duct tape since about 2006 but had been using duct tape to create flowers, wallets, bags, etc. since before I can remember. I participated in the 2009 Stuck at Prom competition and made it into the top 10 for my butterfly inspired prom dress and matching tuxedo. I do not use fabric for the bases of my dresses, opting for trash bags instead. I only used fabric once and it just didn't feel right to me because it wasn't 100% recyclable materials. I feel anyone can stick duct tape to fabric (although it doesn't stick very well) but it takes a lot more craft to think outside the box.

I hope to one day be able to sell my dresses or give them to Henkle (the maker of Duck Brand Duct Tape) in exchange for more duct tape (because hey, I'm the typical struggling college kid, working part time, going to school full time and it's getting difficult to finance these dresses). I will post something later once I decide if I will be selling them (on something like Etsy) or something else.

I will eventually be putting up a dress evolution timeline including all the dresses I wore to various school dances, concerts, and Fashion Week Cleveland. I am currently participating with FWC at Ingenuity Fest Cleveland. Speaking of Ingenuity, I'd better get ready because that is tonight and tomorrow night! I hope to see you all there!

With Love,

Sarah "Sadie" Nedbalski

(Photo credit: Robert Banks)