Ageing the Wedding Dress and Veil

I decided to paint over the plastic flowers on the veil because I thought they looked too bright underneath the fake flowers I was going to put on top. I therefore mixed green and brown to make this dark, merky colour as I thought it would just add depth to the flowers on top. To age the veil, I used a cheese grater and rubbed the material with it to make rips and holes and I am really happy with the results. I also soaked teas bags in hot water and rubbed the tea bags over the veil to give it a yellowy colour that Pip describes. 

I was going to use real flowers and let them go off and die, however I knew that this wouldn't work ver well for continuity as they wouldn't necessarily look the same as before. I therefore chose to find fake flowers that would give the same effect. These were difficult to find, as not many people want to buy dead flowers, however after looking around I finally found some that I thought were perfect! I played around with the flowers that go around the top of the veil and I was really excited by how it looked! I think that the wooden flowers look really realistic, as if they were once white roses and had now died and gone off colour. I will need to buy some more of these roses so that they can go all around the back and super glue them in place for continuity. 

 To age the dress, I used the same method as with the veil. I used a cheese grater (as shown below) and pulled at the material to make rips and to unpick some of the stitching. I also used wet tea bags to make the material look more yellow and old. I only worked on the upper half of the dress as this would be the only part that is going to be shown in my final images. I am really happy with the results. I also ripped around the neck line of the dress to make it look bigger as it says that she used to fit the dress but had now 'shrunk to skin and bone' so therefore it was too big for her.

Close-up of the worn material.

Before.

After.