Deco Madness and Tips

What have I been up to these last 10 days? Well, sorry for not blogging more often (I'm sure you've heard that line before), but I promise I've got good stuff for you guys to read now! ^_^ Quality, not quantity, right? I've been very busy with starting school, but mostly I've been toiling over jewels and charms. Specifically for my phone!

Here we can see my old phone on the right versus my new phone cover on the left.


For the one on the right (my old one and first attempt at deco), I used stick n' seal glue and then switched to super glue. I used 5mm jewels bought at a Michael's craft store along with some charms I found in their button section. Not bad for a first try, I think.

For the one on the right (my new one), I used stick n' seal only for the large pieces and super glue for the jewels. I used 2mm jewels and charms I bought from Yuki. (Hint - she ships from Japan to US, and sells GAL mags, just sayin'.)

My old phone looks sloppy in my opinion. I actually screwed up quite a few times, so I ended up gluing jewels on top of other jewels to cover it up. Oh, such a heavy phone case because of that. @_@

For my new one, I was super careful. Not only that, but I knew what I was getting myself into and had learned many valuable lessons from my previous phone deco adventure.

Here is what I learned:
*For large parts, use a very strong glue. Super glue will not cut cut it.
*For smaller, detailed work, use a glue that doesn't dry too quickly. I used super glue, but epoxy would hold better. You will need to move and adjust as you go.
*Use tweezers - touch the tip to the glue (just so that a very tiny amount is on the pointy tip of one side of your tweezers) and use it to pick up and place jewels. It will stick to the tip, but once you place it in the glue on your surface, it will detach from the tip of your tweezer. I've tried special jewel sticks, manicure sticks... it just didn't work well.
*Lay out your large parts first and glue them down. Then glue the jewels around them.
*Be patient! My first phone only took me a couple of hours, but my second case took me several nights... probably 8-10 hours total. Its worth the wait!

What handy tricks have you discovered while deco-ing?