Well next up after getting the shape nailed down was to investigate the jewel options. Originally I had planned for it to be a much longer search, to be stuck in Ebay and Etsy hell with maybe a long trip to Goodwill in my future. Reality? One Annual Rummage Sale later and I had everything I needed to keep going.
At the sale I found two deals - a pair of orange oval stoned earrings for $15, and a grab bag of clear glass beads for $4. I had already contemplated what my options would be if I couldn't find the right shade of teal/green, and painting glass with nail polish (not totally dissimilar to what I did for Princess Warrior Daisy) definitely worked for me. Especially for $4.
Sorry, forgot to take a picture of the earrings as they were "before". But they were just in a pewter frame with a few tabs - I pulled back the frame with the pliers and they both released almost immediately.
Random glass pieces/beads. There are a lot more left for future projects, which is awesome. Also I just realized that this is me showing the world I propped my glue gun on old birth control packet. DON'T JUDGE THE ARTISTIC PROCESS OK?!
Again, installing these were a relatively simple process - I looked at my reference photos and kind of went with my gut, getting it as close as possible and creating a little "inset" shape for the jewel. I used the hot tip of the glue gun to melt a space into where I wanted it to sit, pushed the jewel into place, and circled it with even more hot glue after that. The more difficult part here is that this is the point where I really started to clean up my lines and shapes.
When you're applying layers of hot glue, things get bulky and bumpy - fast. I first thought I could use my heat gun to warm a butter knife to shape pieces, but no go. It didn't get hot enough. And it only took about 5 secs of heat for me to realize I couldn't apply the heat gun to the crown itself. So instead, and I'm sorry in advance, I took the plastic guard off the tip and started using the gun itself. Without applying more glue I'd smooth and coax curves into being more fluid, removing extra glue as I went. I even refined the shapes of the leaf tips, because I wasn't sure how much could be fixed later in paint touch ups.
What does this mean for you? It means that I have even less of a "tutorial" to offer you, because there is no right or wrong answer. Hell, even a coworker said that she had a hot knife I could borrow in the future (I still don't know what that is). It's totally up to you to decide if your crown is looking right, which I'm bad it in general because I tend to think in terms of "right" and "wrong". Still, my final result (before painting) is one I'm happy with. It's not "perfect" but I'm satisfied and am happy to keep going towards completion.
Which brings us to the end of Part II! Next up is painting and I'm not sure how long that will take. I backed each jewel with hot glue because I wanted to see how the opacity would affect the sheen. So far so good, but I did decide to buy a white primer instead of the brown I had on hand, because I'm still concerned a dark backing would negatively affect the "glow". After the white primer is gold acrylic paint, and after that aging with brown/black, and then going in with gold Rub N' Buff for that "real" effect (I learned about this stuff from Epbot, and a couple places you can see her using it are here and here).
Not too shabby right?! Though you should have heard the cursing as I was covering the jewels in masking tape, it was not my shining moment. And looking at these HUGE PHOTOS now kinda makes me want to go remove some of the glue on the edges of the orange tones....shrug. It'll happen or it won't but at least it's not a total fail!
Don't miss out! You can find the other parts of this series below:
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