This could have been, I suppose, a tutorial for a pair of 18th Century Girandole Earrings. But at the present moment, I am holding a piece of pot metal costume jewelry and gluing lots of rhinestones onto it. I previously soaked the old rhinestones off – dissolving the old glue in a jar of solvent, stopping by the jar every day to shake it and see what had detached, what had shifted, and walking away again to let the solvent continue its work. It took about a week.
Once the piece was bare, I washed it and dried it and brought out baggies of small point-back rhinestones in 4 different sizes. I filled a glue syringe with an adhesive called Beacon 527 and, very carefully, 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 earring , and then, again, very carefully, I picked up the tiny winking rhinestones, one by one on the tip of a wax pencil, and pressed I them into place.
I found that working six divots, six rhinestones, at a time was the optimum balance between drying glue and my fine, fragile patience. Dry enough to grip, still liquid enough to hold.
Syringe, pencil, pick press. Ordered and orderly. Measured and calm. A process with no association with the old towel covering my dining table, a sea of rhinestones glued into the fluff, or the floor, a hazard for bare feet from an ocean of stray point- backs, or my fingers, calloused and crusted with Beacon 527 to a degree that means I will soon be dipping my own hands into a solvent that can 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 look in style and shape quite reasonably like the 18th Century Girandole earrings in the V&A. So I bought them, waited (with polite patience) until they arrived, and then I ran around in circles squeaking with excitement when they did.
Obviously, after carrying on a fair bit about all the gluing, I finished them.
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 were a lot of rhinestones stuck to that old beach towel. That beacon 527 is strong stuff.