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How to glue rhinestones to fabric

Unless you’re one of the lucky people to own something like a King tool, which will allow you to hotfix rhinestones, you will have to glue them.

But if you don’t know how to do that correctly, you can be most certain that many of the stones will come off within a short time. To do it correctly, you need:

• Rhinestones (…obviously…)
• Rhinestone glue (and I mean Rhinestone glue. Nothing else. It’s white when applied and dries to an invisible mass which much resembles transparent plastic.)
• Your fabric

Place some drops of the rhinestone glue on the fabric. The drop should have about the same size as the rhinestone. Don’t apply too much nor too little – practice will teach you when the drop is right (which you will determine within the next steps)

Use needle nose pliers or small crafts pliers to pick up a rhinestone.

Place the rhinestone on top of the glue drop, ….

…so that it sits right in the middle and on top of the glue drop. If it doesn’t, you can use your pliers to *carefully* push it into place. If you can’t achieve this without accidentally smearing the glue, please continue reading the last paragraph of this mini tutorial on gluing rhinestones.

Push the rhinestone down and into the glue, onto the fabric, so that the glue emerges from *all* sides under the rhinestone as even as possible, leaving the rhinestone with a halo of glue.
This „halo“ makes sure that the rhinestone will stay in place – it works like a plastic base for the rhinestone. It’s important that the rhinestone *has* this halo all around after being pushed into the fabric. If the rhinestone only has the glue on its flat side, but no glue to form a halo, then you can be almost sure that the rhinestone will come off, leaving a ‚mirror stain‘ behind (because the mirror backing of the stone will remain on the glued spot – it sticks to the glue, but can’t carry the weight of the rhinestone).
Don’t forget that the halo will be invisible as soon as the glue has dried. Don’t be afraid of the halo – I know that at first, it looks very strange and ugly, but you will get used to it – it won’t be there for long anyway.
Be patient:
Depending on how much glue you have applied, the fabric and the temperature in the room where it dries, the drying process may take up to three days (or more – if, for example, you decide to let something like this dry outside during the winter, it may take weeks… 😉 ). The glue is dry if you can’t see it any more.

If for any reason you are not satisfied with the „halo“ or the placement of the stone, you can *immediately* remove it from the fabric and wipe the glue off with your fingers (or wash it off with water), then it will be just as if it was new. Don’t forget to carefully remove the glue stain on the fabric, perhaps by using a Q-tip which about has the right size.

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