ElaineMiller.com

These instructions are text-only. One of these days I’ll get around to taking pics.

Read everything before you actually start, so you know what decisions you’ll be making.

Materials You Need:

a few rolls of duct tape
a non-sticky bodysheath, like a tight cotton T
heavy-duty scissors or shears
something for boning material
a helper-human
a hole-punching tool
lacing material

optional but recommended: a lot of eyelets and an eyelet-pounding tool or setter.

First Step: Wrap yourself

Put the tshirt or tank, or bodysheath on over your naked self. Say goodbye to it, you’ll never see it whole again. Decide where your corset will go on your body, and mark it on the sheath.

Second Step: Boning

Cut the boning material to the correct length, and tape it to the sheath.

I used inch-wide strips of the vinyl stuff that goes along the bottom of a wall in an office building. Six strips seemed to work for me, running vertically. If my body, seen from a vantage point directly above my head, were a clock face, with my nose pointing to midnight, the strips would have been placed at 10, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 9.

Third Step: Wrapping

Here’s where your helper human will come in handy.

Take duct tape, and wrap it tight around your body. Snug, not pinching. Keep wrapping. You’ll need several layers to be firm enough. Break the tape and wrap in the other direction frequently, because one-way wrapping will make your assets shift in a wierd twisty way.
Make the last, top layer as smooth as you can, or heck, tape a design if you like. Make sure the upper and lower edges are even.

Fourth Step: Removal

Take your shears, and cut the corset, and the now integral sheath, off your body. Use a very straight line down either your spine, or straight down your front.

Fifth Step: Make it two sizes smaller

On both sides of the slice line where you cut the corset, trim away 1 inch (or 2 or more) of the duct tape material. If you wanna get fancy, you can take slightly more corset away near the waistline, so the finished, cinched corset is more pinchy in the waist area.

Sixth Step: Finish the Edges

Using more duct tape, finish the edges with a couple layers of tape folded over the top and bottom edges of the corset, and the longitudinal cut edges.

Seventh Step: Make the Lace Holes

Using a hole-punching thingy, punch holes down both sides of the longitudinal cut. Make sure both sides match exactly in hole placement, so you’ll end up with an even number of holes.

If you’re wanting the corset to last more than one or two wearings, hammer eyelets / grommets into the holes you made.

Eighth and Final Step

If your lacing material is long enough run laces though the holes in the corset, step into it, and tight it up tight.
If you only have just enough lacing material, you’ll need help lacing it up while it’s actually on your body.

Final Notes

Duct tape comes in some pretty fancy colours. Do experiment.

Hardcore corset lovers may wish to open the front *and* the back to lacing.

Try it for size before punching all those holes and placing all those eyelets.

Use a thicker kinda material for the sheath-thing. If you use really thin or lace-like material, the tape glue will seep through and getcha.