October 05 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #1

I have been posting this fig in some forum and i got a lot of praise about the cloth made of cigarette paper.
i have been using this trick for years, mainly to build some newspapers and open books.
It's a really ideal material, i have been smoking for years when i was younger, and you learn fast the properties of this material while trying to roll a fag with more than one sheet of cig paper, or even when you are dead drunk. the material is real strong, resists to water and dead thin too!
 -here's now how to do a shirt in cigarette paper.

First cut the cig paper roughly like I have been showing above, cut 2 times near the collar and fold back the 2 bits inside the collar. these 2 bits will serve as gluing surfaces, they need to be not so visible as you need to use a surface which will be bigger than -say the shirt's hem.

October 05 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #2

When you glue the 2 sides, it should look like the picture below -remember to put the gluing joints *inside* by folding back the joints under the proper shirt.
Then with my X acto, i try to move apart the 2 sides near the gluing joint to be really sure that nothing will gluie the 2 sides together.

October 05 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #3

Open the collar with a cutter stroke but better put some bit of plastic between the 2 sides so that you don't cut both sides of the shirt.
And then just prepare the collar, the sleeve and the flap of the shirt which are basically cut and folded cig paper with no glue.

October 05 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #4

The trick is basically the same with an opened shirt, except it's better to open the shirt on the front and then fold each side.

October 05 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #5

Then I let dry the sleeves/shirts /trousers overnight while letting some matches in the openings, to be really sure that no glue will attach the sides together.
I am using a very light glue, paper glue for kids of course

October 05 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #6

Then -and here you have to be *careful* because half of the real trick is there.
Well, just manage to twist the glued paper between your fingers so that you *break the paper's structure*, only then you will see that the paper will get quite a cloth like look :)

Okay, the following of this SBS is scheduled for monday i suppose :)

Special note for the french
J'ai noté qu'un certain nombre de français passaient par la traduction Google pour lire mon blabla, j'en suis désolé, entretenir ce blog est aussi pour moi une bonne façon d'entretenir mon anglais, mais je réponds aux questions s'il y a un truc précis que vous voulez savoir :)

October 09 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #7

Okay so it wasn't Monday but Tuesday. Having a small kid means you go to sleep early.

So the first part of the pictures shows the kind of glue i use, and also the plastic brush I use to apply this kind of glue, it's a "paint shaper" or so they tell.
So what i am doing is just rolling the sleeve against a match so that it creates some of the folds you have as the lapel of the sleeve is of a smaller diameter than the sleeve of course.
Once i have some nice folds, i cut the sleeve like you would have normally for a shirt and then i glue a folded-up sheet of cig paper to have a stronger feel about that lapel.
Then  I set apart the unglued part of the lapel from the sleeve so that the whole could get more pliability once I will shape the whole shirt.

October 09 2007 | Building clothes out of cigarette paper #8

Then of course i have to cut the opening for the sleeves in the main body of the shirt. I am doing that from the inside with my trusty blade!
Then I slice my sleeve accordingly and glue it in the inside of the body of the shirt.
Of course I insert some matches so that each side doesn't glue to the other one.