So, if you’ve followed our pastie making series – part one – the basics here and part two – odd shapes here, you must be itching to get at those rhinestones and decorate them! Part 3 is all about the decoration – and using your imagination too! 

What you will need:

To make sparkly – rhinestones, glue (e6000 or gemtac are the best), glitter, sequins, clear nail varnish (sparkly nail varnish will also work)

To add other embellishments – Anything you can get your hands on – old earrings, pipe cleaners, sequins, etc

 Step 1 – Rhinestoning

(If you are only covering your pasties in glitter, you can jump this step and go straight to two and 3) Mark out your design on your pastie. We’re making diamonds (for performer Emerald Green) as this will show you a number of techniques. We’ve used tailor’s chalk to draw our design.

Once you are happy with the design, you can start with the decoration. You could mark out your details with a line of sequins, this would work really well, but we’re rhinestoning on our details. Make sure you choose quality rhinestones – some stones are clear but stuck on a coloured base to make it appear they are coloured. We like Eimass as they are not that expensive and the stones are coloured, not the base. You can get hotfix stones, where you use a kandy Kane to apply (basically, you pick up each stone with the Kane and wait until the glue on the base of the stone has heated up and is bubbling before you apply) but we think that takes too long! We like to use E6000 glue (with all the windows open!) and for precision, suck up some of the glue in a syringe, which makes application easier and more precise. Do small sections so that the glue does not dry out before you’ve applied your gems.

A few tips –

If you are sparsely covering your pastie with rhinestones, go around the edge, particularly if you have an unusual shape or the pastie is your punchline so that the audience can see what you are wearing

Keep all your gems together in a small bowl or tray, that way none escape!

If you are covering your pastie with gems, start from the inside out, that way you won’t be left with any ‘bald patches’

Step 2 – Glitter

You could just leave your pasties like this, but we are making ‘ultra diamonds’! We want them to be as bling as possible! So now we’re going to add glitter. When your rhinestone work has dried completely, you now need to add the glue in small sections. Doing it in sections will give you more control (and again, the glue will not dry out).

When you are ready to shake the glitter on, do so over a sheet of paper, that way you can save all the excess glitter. When your pasties are completely covered, pat any loose glitter down into the glue (the top of a pencil works well for this). and when they are completely dry, brush away any loose glitter, particularly around any gemstone details, with a small paintbrush.

Step 3 – nail varnish

Now you’ve glittered your pasties, you’ll need to seal the glitter to prevent your hard working pasties going bald! You can do this simply with clear nail varnish. You may have also found your details have lost a bit of the definition after glittering, bit you can redefine them now by choosing a nail varnish with a bit of contrasting glitter in (we’ve used one with a fine holographic silver in). Again, working in sections, paint over the glitter with the nail polish – try not to catch any of your rhinestones as nail varnish could dull their sparkle.

Other techniques…

Sandwiching in details

Another technique that is probably going to be useful is ‘sandwiching’ details. Basically, anything that you add on, that you don’t want to glue on top, and gluing on the reverse of the pastie will cause problems when it comes to sticking the pasties on to yourself. Here we used some pipe cleaners to make these spider pasties for Bailey Blue…

Step a:

Here, we’ve taken the legs and stuck them on the inside of the pastie before we’ve added the backing on. And then we’ve glued the backing on, taking care to ensure it’s stuck between our details (no one likes a lumpy back!)  and sewed it on around the edges as normal (and then we’ve decorated to finish). This method is great for adding a perimeter of petals, or any thing you can think of!

Other details

When it comes to pasties, anything goes. If you’ve got some broken earrings in your draw, they can make elaborate tassels (as in Lilly Laudanum’s Aladdin’s Lamp pasties, below). We used pipe cleaners covered in fabric and then glitter for the snakes on these pasties and Lilly’s Orb pasties for Queen Victoria use a broken sparkly bracelet for the bigger stone details. Also, you can use ribbons to make rosettes and more…Just have a look in your sparkly stash!