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Product Focus: Heat-set crystals
Jun. 17th, 2006 08:19 amHeat-set crystals (aka "iron-on rhinestones") are an embellisher's dream--they are easy and quick to apply, bond durably, and look like a million Broadway bucks. They come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, and colors, including the Vegas showgirl favorite, "aurora borealis."
How do they work? They're exactly what they sound like: a faceted Austrian crystal with a coating of heat-activated adhesive on the back. There are a variety of ways of applying them, using both standard shop equipment and specialty tools.
For Cavalier costumes at the Boston Ballet, my draper insisted that we lay the crystals down, glue side up, in the pattern we wanted upon the ironing table, then gently place the costume pieces in position on top of them and apply the iron from the backside of the fabric. I found this to be effective, but not error-free--sometimes the stones would shift in the application process. It was a good way to put a scattering on all at once, but not useful for maintaining acute control over where the stones wound up attached.
A costumer at Disney in Los Angeles insisted that tweezers and a hotplate was the way to go for accuracy--scatter the stones on the hotplate, glue side up, then place them one by one where you wanted using the tweezers.
My preferred method is to go ahead and buy the specialty tool that heat-set crystal vendors sell called a bejeweling iron or a BeJeweler(tm). It's like a soldering iron with interchangeable tips for various diameters of stones. For speediest application, i set up 2 or 3 of the bejeweling tools and rotate between them. Once you get going, you can set stones nonstop with both accuracy and speed, without fooling with tweezers or the large exposed heating surface of a hotplate. The irons are relatively cheap ($15-25 each) and well worth the investment for what you save in time and trouble.
Using 3 bejeweling irons, i heat-set over 1000 jet-colored crystals in an afternoon on this dress, made for Mariette Hartley in the Huntington Theatre's 1999 production of Mrs. Warren's Profession:
You can buy them from a number of sources, but I have historically purchased my heat-set crystals and setting tools from Creative Crystal. They also offer a product line of heat-set nailheads, which is a speedy and sanity-saving alternative to hand-set studwork, as well as bespoke and custom pattern designs.
How do they work? They're exactly what they sound like: a faceted Austrian crystal with a coating of heat-activated adhesive on the back. There are a variety of ways of applying them, using both standard shop equipment and specialty tools.
For Cavalier costumes at the Boston Ballet, my draper insisted that we lay the crystals down, glue side up, in the pattern we wanted upon the ironing table, then gently place the costume pieces in position on top of them and apply the iron from the backside of the fabric. I found this to be effective, but not error-free--sometimes the stones would shift in the application process. It was a good way to put a scattering on all at once, but not useful for maintaining acute control over where the stones wound up attached.
A costumer at Disney in Los Angeles insisted that tweezers and a hotplate was the way to go for accuracy--scatter the stones on the hotplate, glue side up, then place them one by one where you wanted using the tweezers.
My preferred method is to go ahead and buy the specialty tool that heat-set crystal vendors sell called a bejeweling iron or a BeJeweler(tm). It's like a soldering iron with interchangeable tips for various diameters of stones. For speediest application, i set up 2 or 3 of the bejeweling tools and rotate between them. Once you get going, you can set stones nonstop with both accuracy and speed, without fooling with tweezers or the large exposed heating surface of a hotplate. The irons are relatively cheap ($15-25 each) and well worth the investment for what you save in time and trouble.
Using 3 bejeweling irons, i heat-set over 1000 jet-colored crystals in an afternoon on this dress, made for Mariette Hartley in the Huntington Theatre's 1999 production of Mrs. Warren's Profession:
You can buy them from a number of sources, but I have historically purchased my heat-set crystals and setting tools from Creative Crystal. They also offer a product line of heat-set nailheads, which is a speedy and sanity-saving alternative to hand-set studwork, as well as bespoke and custom pattern designs.
