How to make a dress prettier

Hi All. I know I've been MIA for awhile now. We're all moved in and getting settled. The basement, future home of my crafting, sewing, studio space is still just a pile of boxes. Hopefully soon we can start to organize it a bit so I can find stuff and make some of the ideas in my head.

I haven't been crafting much lately but we did make a cool father's day gift (I'll post later about that) and a few other things so I'm going to try and post a bit more often again.

The one thing about working having your office attached to the mall is that you shop - and find great deals. I love me a deal. So I had to pick up this dress for only $7 from H&M. The only thing is that I knew that Lilo would say that the dress wasn't pretty enough, since it was just grey. So I dug through my stuff to find something to dress it up. I brought home the dress and bow and ribbons for her to help me figure out what to do to make the dress prettier.
The bow and ribbon is from a gift set that I kept and the thinner ribbon was from my stash. We played around with how to put them on and then while Lilo slept I sewed everything on.
The bow on the waist is as is from the package I just reinforced it more so it would come undone and sewed it on. The rose I made from the ribbon, just wrapping it around, hand sewing as I went, twisting the ribbon to give texture. And the thinner ribbons are just folded and sewn down at both ends. I also tacked in place about 1 1/2" from the neck so it would lie flatter.

Lilo was pretty proud of the dress. She wore it to her Junior Kindergarten graduation. It was funny there was a girl in another class that was wearing the same dress but not "prettier" - it's still a really cute dress without the stuff but I know my girl likes the stuff.

Just a few other pics of my cutie, such a big girl now.