Pasties for Everyone!: A How-To Guide

The Femme Conference last weekend was wonderful for a lot of reasons including some community building, heart healing, and general consciousness raising. But this is not to overlook the *amazing* two nights of performances (which included many a hot burlesque queen), but also the pastie making skillshare taught by the stunning and oh-so-talented, Vagina Jenkins. With her permission to re-post, I’m going to provide you with the directions from the informational booklet she put together for us, peppered throughout with some of my own observations and tips. I’m short a reliable digital camera these days, so pardon the lackluster images captured with my camera phone.

Supplies:

- Plastic cup, scissors
- Thin cardboard (think bookmark width) or, if you’re wanting to make fancy/professional pasties, buckram
- Paint, markers, glitter, fabric, rhinestones, sequins, flowers, beads, feathers, tassels
- Tacky glue, Aleene’s “OK to Wash It” glue, E6000 glue, or hot glue
- Eyelash glue, 2-sided carpet tape, or spirit gum/prosthetic glue

Directions:

Step 1: Using the plastic cup, trace the top or bottom of the cup onto the thin cardboard. Depending on the size of your areolae, you can make the decision what side of the cup (or any other traceable object) you’ll want to use. If the cardboard has a glossy side, this is the side you’ll want to put towards your nipple.

Step 2: Cut out the circle of cardboard.
Pasties can also be made in other shapes, such as hearts and stars, too!

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Step 3: Once the base of your pastie is cut out, fold the circle in half
and then half again as shown above on the right.

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Step 4: Unfold the circle and cut along one of the lines from the edge of the circle towards the center, stopping about a centimeter from the center point. Your pastie base should look as the one above.

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Step 5: Overlap the left side of the cut over onto the right side, forming a solid conical shape.
With a toothpick, apply glue to the underside of the overlapping flap in order to secure the edges. Hold in place for several seconds and then allow to dry while you decide with what you will cover the pastie bases!

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Step 6: I chose red flowers, black feathers, and black strung sequins for my pasties, but really the possibilities are endless! You can use curtain tassels for the centers or rhinestones. We even saw someone in the workshop make use of some amazing old-fashioned black and gold dangly earrings for the center. Be careful though – tassels and jewelery chains, when twirling, can get stuck in sequined trim and feathers. Also, too heavy a center, like the earrings I mentioned above, will look gorgeous, but won’t twirl properly because of their weight, so choose your supplies wisely depending on the look you want to achieve.

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Step 7: Spend some time arranging how you want your pasties to look and then get to gluing.
When you’re done, give yourself a pat on the back and strip down for your big ta-da!!!

More Pastie Resources:

- Jo “Boobs” Weldon’s Burlesque E-book
- Amber Ray’s Fancy Pasties
- How to Twirl Titty Tassels

Other posts by Hussy Red

• With bated breath - September 10th, 2008
• The Femme Archive - August 31st, 2008
• The Femme Shark Manifesto - August 21st, 2008

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Tags: burlesque, femme conference