and sometimes the universe craftily kisses you

For the play I'm designing, the director wanted jocks with rhinestones picking out a certain phrase from the play. And I was talking to my younger sister the other day, who often helps me out when I'm making stuff for plays or workshops or anything else I've said yes too, and I asked her how she'd feel about helping sew this phrase onto these jocks.

And she said - I've got a rhinestoner if you want.

"A what?" I replied, confused.

"You know, one of those machines that rhinestones things"

"You don't mean..." I said breathless...

She dived into the biggest craft box I've ever seen (seriously, picture a huge wooden pirate chest, stuffed full of crafting items) and pulled out a plain box

Hoping against hope, I carefully opened the box and pulled out the contents. Beyone my wildest dreams, my younger sister had had stashed in her craft box for years on end, A BEDAZZLER, complete with accessories!!!

It had everything in there, heaps of little stones, instructions, purple iron on stencils all intact and even the letters from Demtel thanking the buyer for their purchase! Ahh, if you're Australian and mid 30s, you'll remember the Demtel ads, where excited ladies offered you carefully scripted reasons why you should buy much junk over the phone.

We think that what happened was that one of my grandmother's friends was sucked in by the aforementioned ads and bought it, but then never used it. All the little rhinestones and stuff were still in packaging stapled closed. At some stage they would have handed it onto my grandmother, thinking she was a crafty type of person, and all crafty people have a use for Bedazzlers, surely. My grandmother obviously never used it, she made toys, not trashy 80s fashion, and a few years ago she handed it to my sister, who stuck it in her craft box and never used it either.

There's no date on the Demtel letter, but it does date it vaguely around the 80s. So this has been sitting in it's box for 20 years just waiting for the right person to come along.

Bedazzlers are really simple to use. Theres the tacky little plastic gem bit and a pointy metal backing that gets inserted into a plastic stapler like thing, and basically you pierce the material to hole it in.
Rhinestone goes into one end...
Pointy metal backing goes into the other end. Place the fabric right side down over the rhinestone and push down.

And congratulations! You have Bedazzled!

I sat on the floor at rehearsal last night happily bedazzling the knickers. So much fun and so, so horribly tacky.

You can even buy more rhinstones on ebay! I am so set. Now all I need to do is find more applications for it, ones that arn't anything I wear, anything anyone I know wears or will be seen with. But nothing like a big of 80s nostalgia to take you back to a more innocent time. Hammer pants, frizzy hair and the good old Bedazzler.