Creating your own gem clusters?

Let us know what you find out! The mask is gorgous!

How about..... Tulle for the backing and using the hot fix rhinestones, or any other glue of choice. Once you cut the tulle, it would be like hair lace for beards and moustaches, and easily glued with prosaide.

Create them on a mirror, or a non stick cookie sheet. Lay the tulle down on the mirror or sheet. Glue the rhinestones in place, trim around the clusters with razor, then use a thin flat spatula to encourage the clusters off the mirror/sheet.

Acrylic rhinestones are less than 3 cents each in bulk.

Side note- Does anyone here sell upgrates like tiaras? The Company I buy Rhinestones from has clear rhinestone tiaras on clearance for like $8.

Also, anyone use sequins as opposed to the acrylic gems??? They would be lighter, and easier to back with liquid latex or lace or whatever....

I have no idea if its safe for skin or if it would even work, put how about using puffy paint? like for tshirt decorating? Hmmm, I have some, I will check on the ingredient safety and maybe try it and let you all know! I have made some giraffe/scales stencils from the stuff and I love it, it really molds to my face. Again I haven't used it at any jobs until I find out it is safe to use, just at my home.

Hmm, I bougt a hotfix yesterday.
You can also glue the little gems on a tight (pantyhose?). If I buy those in skin colour and glue on the skin with body glue, that should work too?

such good ideas. What is the name of your tiara co Leaping lizards? How good are the rinestone prices?

If you use a glue on tule or pantyhose- anything open weaved or that will be saturated, you might as well just do the glue alone because it would still come in contact with the skin.

Rhinestones Unlimited... Typically a 42SS (Like 12 MM) acrylic is about $30 per thousand. But they always have stuff on clearance and those are real deals. They are true wholesale, so you have to set up an account with them with business licenses etc.... but anyone can go look at the things the have on their site

I've got a great idea that i'm going to try. I'll let you know what it is after I try it, and how it works...

Okay, long and short of it, I'm not patient enough. I'm going to have to keep trying. Here's my idea.
This blog post ( http://kfba365.blogspot.com/2011/10/day-277-week-in-review.html#axzz1g0OSGcqy ) will give you a recipe to make a prosthetic mixture out of glycerin, gelatin, and water. It dries very flexible. Sticks pretty well, but I think I would probably use some sort of adhesive, just to assure stay-power.
I tried making it and smearing it on wax paper, then adding gems. Problem is, it cools too quickly, and it sets when it cools. So I tried it on a hot surface. That may actually be the trick.
Meanwhile, I'm exhausted and heading my weary tail to bed. I'll pick it back up in the morning.
Night all!

rlthing, what about doing what you said with a heatpack underneath?
say put wax paper on a tray and sit tray on top of some heat packs?

I'm planning to try it directly on an electric griddle.
Heat it, make the gem clusters, turn off the heat, wait for clusters to cool, then pull them off, trim, and place on wax paper.
You COULD do it on wax paper, but you still have to cut away the excess sticky stuff, so you have to handle it anyway.
My electric griddle is non-stick, and this recipe peels up easily, so hopefully, it will come up well.
Hmmm...
I also think I'll try it on the wax paper, now that I think about it. Maybe if I cut the excess off, WITH the wax paper backing still attached, not having to handle it will make it stay stickier....
Nice day for experiments.

This may be a stupid thing to throw in cause I've never attempted gem clusters.....what about sticking them on the sticky side of clear packing tape then cutting around your cluster since it sounds like you gotta glue it on anyway?

Packing tape? How would you then get the cluster on the client?

I kind of get what she is saying.... I did a quick little thign with random gems sitting next to me..

Don't know that I'd want to glue a piece of tape to skin. For one thing, it isn't flexible. For another, it doesn't look professional.
I haven't had time to try my idea further, and don't think I will before Christmas. (Lots of baking for the next few days)
I'll give it a go in a couple weeks, unless someone gets the jump on it.
Feel free, by the way.

I'll be out of town for the holidays, but I'll give it a try when I get back. In theory, the prosthetic mixture does sound as if it would work. It would be a flexible base for the gems. If you added body glue to the back of it and then put it on wax paper, you might be able to then peel it off at a gig and the stickiness would still be there without having to add any at that time. It's definitely worth trying!

i like the idea o tape...put on with glitter tat glue.

i think it would work!

Could always sprinkle a little irridescent glitter on any tape that you couldn't cut off. Was just trying to think of something easy and non-toxic.

Why bother about peeling the gems off the transparencies? I tried this and the clusters came apart so I decided to shape the plastic around the gems and it worked perfect, we just can glue the transparency to the skin with the body glue.

leapinglizards wrote:How about..... Tulle for the backing and using the hot fix rhinestones, or any other glue of choice. Once you cut the tulle, it would be like hair lace for beards and moustaches, and easily glued with prosaide.

Create them on a mirror, or a non stick cookie sheet. Lay the tulle down on the mirror or sheet. Glue the rhinestones in place, trim around the clusters with razor, then use a thin flat spatula to encourage the clusters off the mirror/sheet.

Acrylic rhinestones are less than 3 cents each in bulk.

Side note- Does anyone here sell upgrates like tiaras? The Company I buy Rhinestones from has clear rhinestone tiaras on clearance for like $8.

Also, anyone use sequins as opposed to the acrylic gems??? They would be lighter, and easier to back with liquid latex or lace or whatever....

I think this makes the most sense! You can use any skin-safe glue to adhere the gems to the tulle or crinoline without going crazy trying to find a glue that will "suspend" the gems. When it comes time to adhere the clusters to clients, you don't have to worry about toxicity AND you know the adhesive will grab the backing.

On another note- I was REALLY PO'ed when I saw that Marcela was just taking wholesale craft gems and re-marketing them!!!!!!!!! One time I got a set of "bonus" gems with an order and they were identical to the bags of gems I had gotten from Oriental Trading (listed for significantly less). Oh, AND I once got some bonus St. Patty's day gems. You know what they were? They were the super sticky, totally not skin-safe ornaments for scrap booking! I would hate to put that on my face! It would hurt like crazy to peel it off a CHILD'S face!

This is one of my home made gem clusters... a very large one for the center and two smaller ones for the sides. These were done with rubber cement, let dry, then I just peel them off the plastic and use body glue to attach them to the skin. Hope this is clear enough for you to see:

I did 4 test clusters they are almost dry but I was able to already peel them away from the backing. I'll try the application tomorrow, but here they are.

@Changing, what glue base did you end up going with?

BUMP!
Anyone come up with a winning combo on this yet?

I don't know if anyone is still watching this thread but I thought I'd post anyway. I belly dance and make my own Bindi, which is the same thing as the gem clusters. I use whatever sparkelys I can find from jems to broken jewelry. The glue I use every time is E6000, BUT I do not put it on the skin. At all, ever. What I do is leave it on the plastic backing. I just take small sharp scissors and trim around the Bindi/cluster and leave it on. Then I use spirit gum or for the larger heavier Bindi I use pros-aide directly on the plastic backing. And I reuse my Bindi over and over. this way adds the additional steps of trimming the plastic and adding an adhesive during application, but you have absolutely nothing to fear with it coming into contact with the skin. Here are a couple of the giant ones.