Thanks to a Pattern Review member for asking for advice on rhinestones. Here are a few from the top of my head. More later.
Important tips: keep the glue bottle closed if you are not going to be using it in the next 10 minutes or so. With Aleene’s glue it does tend to start drying quickly and then you will have problems when you start again.
Re: above comment – if you do happen to leave the glue bottle unattended too long, you need to clear the dried glue (I use a sewing pin) and make sure you do a solid squeeze of the bottle onto a scrap to be sure to avoid the hard squeeze and eeek! problem. Any time it feels like you have to squeeze more to get the same amount of glue out, be careful.
Practice making glue dots before you start. It is not hard to get them about the right size even for tiny stones with a bit of practice. And glue is cheap, so it is not wasteful.
If you are doing a very heavily stoned item, do your outline first and fill in gradually. So if you happen to run out of stones, you will still be able to wear the gown while waiting for stones to arrive. I have worn a couple of my gowns before the stones were completely on and they didn’t look incomplete at all.
