Making the Veil, Part 2

When we left off, I had torn apart a perfectly nice veil and refinished the edge with silver thread. Next to do was to add the silver appliques I found, which really wasn't very difficult.

First, I laid the veil on my parents' marble dining table and placed the appliques around the edge until I found an arrangement I liked:


Next, I simply glued the appliques to the tulle according to the directions on the bottle. I made sure to put a piece of parchment paper between the tulle and the table to catch any glue that would leak through. I weighted the appliques down with heavy books and left the whole thing alone for an hour.

Then it was time for the sparkle. I added some of the self-adhesive rhinestones semi-randomly across the tulle. I put a little cluster of rhinestones between each applique to add some sparkle at the edges, and sprinkled a few throughout the body of the veil as well. It was sort of trial-and-error; I'd add a bunch of them, put the veil on, and make my sister stop what she was doing to give me her opinion. Then I'd make adjustments and ask my brother. Then I'd make some more adjustments and ask my mom. That's the beauty of doing projects at home for the holidays -- you have lots of opinions you can gather. The rhinestones weren't super sticky, so I could remove them with a pair of tweezers easily if I needed to.

And here's the final product (Eric, if you don't want to see it, don't look any further!):


And zoomed in a little:

The veil is a little wrinkly, and clearly my hair and clothes leave something to be desired, but hopefully you get the picture. There's enough going on at the edges that it's clearly not a plain veil, the design of the appliques complements the floral/vine embroidery on my dress, and the silver edge and rhinestones give it enough sparkle, but not too much. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and really proud of the fact that I did it myself!

Here's the money breakdown:
Veil: $17.98
Appliques: $20 for 16 of them, including shipping. I bought that many because I didn't know how many I would want to use, but I still have 9 left.
Silver thread: about $5, with a coupon
Fabric glue: a couple bucks
Self-adhesive rhinestones: a couple bucks

So all in all, it probably cost about $47 to make the veil, but I still have tons of thread, appliques, fabric glue, and rhinestones left. I'm glad I did it this way, though, because it's still much cheaper than buying a new veil, and I made it exactly the way I wanted it!