Buttercup - Beading Begins!

Previously on All My Sparkles: The base dress is done and the first round of applique has been glued in place. I'm happy with the fit, and have slowly been gathering pieces required for the crown and jewelry. What needs to happen next is the beading on the dress though. There's a lot of it!

I decided to go with ivory pearls rather than optic white and have stuck with this throughout.

Once I'd got this far with the beading, the giant white space over my chest was becoming really obvious. It definitely needed filling. I found some decent silver applique pieces, though when they arrived they were really bright in comparison to the rest of the costume, so I put a layer of paint over them.

Above - Before and after reshaping to better fit the dress. Below - After painting it blends in much better with the other pieces.

Each bead is placed on a white translucent cup sequin and then stitched in place. I used the same sequins on the shoulder pieces to blend them in where there were very obvious silver sequins originally, and added more pearls.

The top of the oversleeve splits also have small pearls on each side.

The underdress Buttercup wears is a scrunchy affair. To do this I bought silk chiffon, soaked it, scrunched it and left it to dry. I heat-set the pleats, created narrow piping from ivory satin and attached it to the overdress at the front and back.

Below - Close up of the piping - I embellished this with a ric-rac ribbon and small pearls.

Quick trying on session to show the fit and size of the skirt! This was before I embellished the underdress.

 

Next up - The crown. All my pieces have finally arrived!