This is supposed to be a tutorial for a pair of 18th Century Girandole Earrings. At the present moment, however, I am too busy holding a piece of pot metal costume jewelry and gluing about a million rhinestones onto it.
I soaked off the old rhinestones – leaving the earrings in a jar of solvent to dissolve the glue, stopping by the jar every day to shake ‘it ’em and see what had detached, and walking away again to let the solvent continue to work. The whole process took about a week.
Once the piece was bare, I brought out baggies of small point-back rhinestones, filled a glue syringe with an adhesive called Beacon 527 and, with a point finer than a straw needle, doled out drop after drop of glue into the hundreds of divots on the face of the earrings, and one by one on the tip of a wax pencil, I picked up the tiny winking rhinestones and pressed them into place.
I found that working six divots and six rhinestones at a time was the optimum balance between the drying glue and my fine, fragile patience; tacky enough to grip, still liquid enough to hold.
Syringe, pencil, pick, press. Ordered and orderly. Measured and calm. A process that had absolutely nothing to do with the towel on my dining table and the sea of rhinestones glued into its fluff, or with the floor, and the ocean of stray pointy-back stones scattered across it, or with my fingers, calloused and crusted with Beacon 527 to a degree that meant I would soon have to dip my own hands into a solvent that could dissolve plastic.
Ahem.
Remember how, in my last post, I mentioned a rather stunning 18th Century stomacher brooch in the Victoria and Albert Museum?
Yes, that one. On the V&A website, this brooch is exhibited as part of a set, along with a pair of equally stunning 18th Century girandole earrings.
Remember how I found on aliexpress a brooch that looked awfully similar to the V&A one? And made it into a properly 18th Century brooch of my own?
Well, my luck didn’t run out with the brooch – on aliexpress I ALSO found a pair of rhinestone earrings that in style and shape look quite reasonably like the 18th Century Girandole earrings in the V&A. I bought them, waited (with polite patience) until they arrived, and then I ran around in circles squeaking with excitement when they did.
And then I turned them into THIS.
I glued on a pair of earring hooks as well, to replace the original posts, while i listened to the towel rattling round and round and round in the washing machine.
There was an awful lot of rhinestones stuck to that old beach towel. That Beacon 527 is strong stuff.