Hamilton - King George Crown / Collar Part V + Star Part III

My inspiration after seeing the show in September is still going strong, but between school and holidays and getting sick, time has been short.  I did finally manage to make some notable progress this past week though.

Firstly, I finished the chest star badge!

I did end up making some changes from the show's design and what I had planned, namely the silver paint.  I could say it was for the sake of creativity or originality or personalization, but in truth it just wasn't looking right after the way I had to go about making it.  The silver paint I added to the background hid a few sins and made it look a bit more dynamic, so all in all I'm happy with it.

As far as crown progress goes...

Because the edges of the bead trim were visible on the back sides of the vertical strips, it was looking a little rough, so I cut some 1x9" strips of cardstock and glued it over the back to cover it.

Back when I started posting on the crown, I gave a little preview of the filigrees/beads/gems/rhinestones and said I’d come back to it when it was more relevant. I’ve been putting off organizing that because there’s so much to slug through, but here we are.

• The top cross and ball use 30mm teardrop pearl pendants (2), 12mm beads (2), 5mm round red cabochons (8), 18mm round clear cabochons (2), and 4mm round clear rhinestones (about 75). I initially got 6mm beads for the sides of the cross but they ended up too small, so I used the 12mm on the sides too.
• Each vertical strip uses 25mm square filigree stampings (2), 13x18mm oval red rhinestone (1), and 4mm round clear rhinestones (10).
• Each Maltese cross around the base uses 25mm clover filigree (1), 18mm round clear rhinestone (1), 8mm round blue rhinestones (2), 8mm round red rhinestone (1), 8mm round clear rhinestone (1), 6x12mm navette clear rhinestones (8), and 3mm round clear rhinestones (16)
• Each fleur-de-lis around the base uses 8mm round blue rhinestone (1), 8mm round clear rhinestones (9), 4mm round clear rhinestones (18), and 3mm round clear rhinestones (11).
• The horizontal band uses 25mm square filigree stampings (16), 13x18mm oval green rhinestones (4), 13x18mm oval red rhinestones (4), 13x18mm oval clear rhinestones (8), and 4mm round clear rhinestones (64), and 3mm round clear rhinestones (64).

And of course there were some whoopsies. For everything that uses 3-4mm rhinestones, I initially mis-measured and bought 6mm which ended up too big next to the 8mm stones, so I had to buy smaller replacements. I also had to buy more than I needed for pretty much everything, which was a hassle, so total cost and actual cost will end up fairly different on this project.

I started with the 18mm round clear stones on the centers of the Maltese crosses, then did the 13x18 oval stones around the base, then the 13x18 red stones on the vertical strips.  There's not much definitive strategy to this, but I am kind of working my way down in size since that seems to be the easiest way to handle it. 

The stage-used crowns have a specific asymmetrical pattern to the red/green/clear oval rhinestones on the horizontal strip around the base (and the real historical crown has a similar asymmetrical pattern). I couldn’t figure out exactly what the pattern was, and the asymmetry bothered me, so I simplified it: stones under the crosses are green, stones under the fleur-de-lis are red, and stones in the spaces between crosses and fleur-de-lis are clear.

Over a few more days, I managed to finish the rhinestones faster than I thought. The larger stones took quite a while because with their weight, I had to hold each one in place as the glue set so they wouldn’t slide around.  The smaller stones being lighter didn’t really drift much if at all while they were setting, so I could move faster from one to the next.  I also added stones around the ball on top after this.

All told, there are about 550 stones (!!!) on the whole thing.

I also assembled the livery collar. I’ve been waiting since there aren’t many places to easily store it as a whole piece, but I’m getting close to starting on the cape so I wanted the collar ready to go for that. (I was also bored and antsy and the collar was an easy thing to get done.)

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