LEWISTON – A prom dress made from Starburst candy wrappers may have set the stage for a career in fashion.

Lewiston High School senior Nina Sysko made her dress with hundreds of multicolored squares of paper. At $2.50 for one bag of the chewy fruit-flavored sweets, she figures her dress cost about $62.

“It’s got all 16 Starburst colors,” Sysko said.

It took Sysko about two years to make her dress. She got the idea after hearing about students who made dresses out of duct tape for a scholarship competition.

“We’re very proud of her creativity,” her mother, Holly Sysko, said. “I’m amazed at how smart she was in figuring out how to do it.”

Sysko braided some wrappers into a sash and made a sleeveless top and a skirt by sewing more wrappers to pieces of fabric. She sewed through the night for three days before the prom and finished with hours to spare.

“Everyone was counting on it,” she said. “I didn’t want to let them down.”

Sysko says so many people were snapping pictures of her at the prom that she felt like a movie star. And now, she says she’s considering a career in fashion design.