Heat Transfer Rhinestone Designs

[patatty]

Has anyone ever applied a heat-transfer rhinestone design to a skate dress? I bought a design to put on my new competition dress, but the directions are directed to using some big heat-transfer machine. Can you do it with just an iron? If so, at what heat setting and for how long? I'm a little afraid to try it on my own for fear of ruining the dress. Any advice would be appreciated!

[RachelSk8er]

I always just use E6000 and the normal kind of stones, but once I saw the guy who works for Del gluing on heat transfer stones to a dress at a competition. He had them all sparkly-side down on a portable plug in pancake skillet-type thing and was picking them up with some tweezers (the kind with the bent gripping area at the end) and plopping them on the dress.

Maybe just call where you got them from for clarification?

[Skittl1321]

Do you have a shop at your mall that does "while you wait t-shirts"? Not everyone does, but I've lived a few places where they do this, maybe they'd let you use it for a very small fee?

Otherwise, I would think an iron would work, but I have no idea for how long.

But I think this is different then hot-fix crystals- right?

[sk8tmum]

What kind of material is the dress? That might influence the how-to decision; some dress material won't take kindly to being put in the heat-transfer thing, or coming in contact with the hot iron:frus:

As for how to do the transfer: usually just an iron on the hottest setting, no steam does it. But, with a pressing cloth over the transfer itself (a good linen handkerchief can work).

[patatty]

Thanks for the tips. It's a lycra dress, so I'm a little nervous about melting it. I'm going to try it out first on a headband that I made from the scrunchy the comes with the dress. I have a small design for the headband and a larger one for the front of the dress. If that works, then I'll do the dress itself. I may try a low setting on the iron first to see if that's enough to melt the glue without melting the fabric. I'll let you all know if it's a success (or if I have to buy a new dress!!!).