dress decorating questions

[dak_rbb]

I have three plain dresses that I need to turn into competition dresses in four weeks.  Eeek!  I have several questions for all the much more experienced dress decorators:

1)  Good sources for crystals?  I've used dreamtimecreations in the past, but there are a few specific shapes/colors which they don't have so I would like to look around a bit more.

2) I have one mesh covered Lycra dress.  Do I need to be careful not to glue through the mesh to the Lycra below?  Is that even possible with a finished dress?  Any tips?  I've always used E6000 glue with either a syringe or a toothpick to apply crystals.

3) One dress is black on the top of the bodice and royal below.  This is for a program to Spanish dance music. I'm trying to make the black section look like a jacket and was going to do that with a crystal design outlining the bottom, neck, sleeve and up the front.  However I found this site http://www.figureskatewear.com/custom-dresses-gallery/ with beautiful decorations using Venice lace (I think that's what it's called).  This would be perfect for this dress (see especially red dress in upper left corner).  I would want gold trim, so I think I would need to cut and then paint the lace (which seems to mostly come in white) with some kind of metallic paint or glue.  I'm not sure if it would need to be sewn onto the dress or if small sections could just be glued.  Has anyone ever tried anything like this? Any suggestions would be most appreciated!