Rhinestone Flames- a Dress Should Tell a Story

 New Orleans-There is a deep red building with wraparound balconies, on the corner of Saint Ann and Royal Street, a young woman attempts to slide, unnoticed into the stream of people jostling their way to a bar, to dinner but the throng parts. Her dress appears to be on fire, the circle of people widens to avoid the heat, she nods, flashing elongated canines and is gone.  The crowd merges back together, each person wondering why they parted. The Vampire Ball is invitation only.

Dress- this dress was purchased at a thrift store for five dollars

Rhinestone Crystals (red, orange, yellow & white) assorted sizes 2 mm to 6.5-mm

Tweezers

Sorting trays

E600

Tape measure 

Mannequin/cardboard

Plastic wrap

Patience, lots of patience

An invitation to New Orleans, a vampire ball. Salon noir, black on black motif is the expected dress code, a black smock was purchased, but that story has been told a thousand times. Vampire mythology is filled with supernatural powers, herculean strength and speed but it always highlights their weakness- silver, sunlight and fire.  Except, if you are a 500 year old being, whose creator was centuries older, you are immortal and can taunt the throes of a blazing fire. A dress should tell a story and a good backstory is the key to starting a conversation.

A dress form would have been ideal, but we do not have one.  However, we do have an art mannequin, so after taking my daughter's measurements, we wrapped the mannequin in fabric and plastic wrap.  The form was great for making sure that the dress fitted properly .  However, the vertical surface was difficult to work on and once the bust and behind was completed, we transferred it to a cardboard form to make gluing the rhinestones easier.

Gluing rhinestones is tedious! Actually, gluing rhinestones is very tedious! We opted to use E 6000 adhesive to insure that the rhinestones never came off.   Each rhinestone must be placed individually and many of the small ones had to be placed with tweezers. We had allotted about 20 hours to the project, 60 hours later the event was just a few days away, so we had to call in reinforcements! The dress has about 50,000 rhinestones, based on the number purchased and adjusted for the ones left over or sucked up by the vacuum.

The dress was a smashing success.  We added a crown of thorns with hidden eyes and a small flame evening bag. Glittering red boots made my daughter a captivating figure at 6’3’’.  As she had hoped the dress was a topic of conversation…

Creating a rhinestone dress costs much less than buying a beaded evening gown. The total cost for the dress was $98.00 dollars!  It was also a fun project, lots of laughs, conversation and good wine.  However, the project requires a lot of time! Since this dress was created for an event, we did not have the luxury of time to take a break and finish it later.   Also, a rhinestone covered dress is very heavy- this dress weighs about seven pounds!  It is also important to think about any rhinestones near the behind that may infer with sitting.  Would I do it again- maybe.