Studs and rhinestones are a fun and easy way to embellish your nails, and are great for beginners and pros alike. Today’s post is going to walk you through what studs and rhinestones are, how to use them, and where to buy them.

What are studs and rhinestones?

Studs and rhinestones are small 3D shapes with a flat back that are commonly used in nail art. Rhinestones are generally made out of plastic and studs made out of metal. They both come in a variety of different shapes and sizes, ranging from circles and squares, to stars and hearts, and recently some studs have been developed to be holographic or glow in the dark. They often come in a wheel like the ones in the photo below for easy storage.

Source: Ebay

How do I apply studs and rhinestones?

Step 1. Before you start your mani, be sure to lay your studs/rhinestones out on your workspace so that they’re the right way up. There’s nothing worse than trying to turn them the right way up once your nails are wet!

Step 2. Next you need to decide which method you’re going to use to pick up your studs/rhinestones. There are two common methods for picking up studs and rhinestones and placing them on the nail, these include using tweezers, or a dotting tool dipped in clear polish (read my guide to using dotting tools here). You can also purchase a ‘rhinestone picker’ which is a pencil with a wax based lead that will pick up the rhinestone or stud, but in my experience I’ve found that they leave a white residue from the lead on the stud/rhinestone which isn’t ideal.

Step 3. Paint your nails as you normally would, but don’t apply your top coat yet. Working one nail at a time, apply a clear polish to the nail, and carefully place your studs/rhinestones in place. Make sure the clear polish that you use isn’t fast drying unless you’re prepared to work at lightning speed. If your rhinestones are rather large you may wish to secure them using nail glue, but I’ve found that the majority of studs and rhinestones will hold for around 4 or 5 days just by securing them to a clear polish.

Step 4. Once you’re happy with the placement of your studs/rhinestones, apply a clear top coat to secure them in place. Tada! Mani complete.

Source: Nailed Obsession

Where to buy studs and rhinestones

Studs and rhinestones can be bought for a few dollars on ebay and from Born Pretty Store. They can also be found in some arts and crafts stores. You can quite often find packs that contain several different sizes and shapes, although keep in mind that often these will contain very large shapes that won’t sit flat on the nail (particularly with studs), so if that’s important to you it might be safer to stick to a pack with a single size/shape to begin with. The colours, shapes, sizes, and finishes of studs and rhinestones are endless, so everyone is bound to find something to suit their style!

Source: Nailed Obsession

Source: Nailed Obsession

What are your favourite ways to use studs and rhinestones in nail art?

Anthea is currently studying a Bachelor of Business majoring in Marketing and Japanese, and has a qualification in Fashion Design and Technology. When she's not busy cramming for her next exam she’s working on her nail polish label Sayuri, and blogging at Nailed Obsession. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram (@anthea_nailedobsession).

Hello beautiful people! Corynn Musser of Mucking Fusser here to share with you an in depth water marbling tutorial as well as some tips and tricks! If you didn't know already I am a water marbling fanatic, I really can't get enough of it! There are so many different combinations and designs you can achieve.

So let's start out with some photo spam of the manicure I did! Out of all the marbling designs I wanted to do a tutorial for what I think is one of the most popular ones, the flower design. I used three of my favorite Zoya creams Mira, Wednesday and Shelby. I usually have great success with the Zoya creams. I once I did a marble with just Mira and Wednesday, also a great combination.

TUTORIAL TIME!

Supplies needed: - Plastic cup filled with room temperature filtered water
- Three orange sticks: one to make the design, one to pick up the excess polish and one to clean around your nail (you could also use toothpicks if you don't have orange sticks)
- Masking tape
- Q-tips (cotton buds) or cleanup brush with dish of polish remover
- Paper towels
- Your favorite smoothest white and 2-3 different polishes

Prep: To help lessen the chance of nicking your nails rip up the needed amount of tape. For each finger I use two pieces: a small one wrapped around the nail near the base of the cuticle, and another wrapped around the rest of the nail. Lay out some paper towels to work on and so you can wipe off your stick onto them.

Part I

1. Paint your nails with a base of white and let that dry. Tape a piece of masking tape around your nail near the base of the cuticle and then around the rest of your nail.

2. Open all the polishes to be used. Begin dropping a drip of each color one after another.

3. & 4. When dropping these drips you sometimes can gently touch the surface of the water right when the drip is near the end of the brush to help it drop into the water.

5. Keep letting the drips dissipate fully before dripping the next drop.

6. & 7. Some polishes are thicker then others and you only need a few rounds of them. For these Zoya creams I did five full rounds of each color

8. When you have a nice bullseye and the rings stop dissipating as much, you can stop and begin creating your design with an orange stick.

9. Don't wait to begin making the design. The longer you wait the more the polish dries making it hard to create a design in the water. Place your stick on the outer part of the design.

10. Drag your stick to the middle of the design.

11. From the opposite side drag to the middle.

12. When you get to the middle gently dip the tip of the stick a little further down into the water. This will help clean up your design and make it neat and tight.

13. As shown in the photo, drag from the left side into the middle.

14. Now drag from the right side to the middle of the design.

15. Again dip the stick into the middle to clean up the design some.

16. Now begin dragging in between each petal

Part II

1. Here is what the design looks like when you drag in between one petal.

2. Next drag in between the opposite petal.

3. & 4. Do this same action again for the other two remaining petals

5. You should have a nice even looking flower design at this point in time. If you want big petals you can stop here. For tighter petals keep going.

6. Now you are going to want to keep dragging in between the petals very gently. The design is getting drier and could break apart with a faulty stroke.

7. Keep dragging until you have even tighter petals, similar to step 5, just closer to one another.

8. To dip your finger you may want to turn the cup around as shown from step 7 to 8.

9. Now that you have this nice design, find out where you want to place your nail.

10. With your taped and prepped nail, place it onto the design. Go with the design into the water when you dip it. Submerge your nail in the water.

11. With your cleanup stick, pick up all the excess polish on the surface of the water.

12. When the water surface is clear, slowly bring your nail out of the water.

Note: Sometimes there are bubbles in between where the polish meets the cuticle. If this happens dip your nail back into the water. Hopefully the bubble will pop. If not keep trying to dip it in the water. Sometimes you can bring your nail up and then pop and maneuver it the way you want.

13. Gently take off the masking tape, I have messed up the design countless times when I remove my tape so just be slow and cautious.

14. With a Q-tip dipped in remover, clean up the big spots of polish on the underside of your nail and finger. Then take a cuticle stick and remove some polish from your nails with that.

15. Finally use a fine clean-up brush dipped in remover to clean up the rest of the polish around the cuticle. Let your nails dry for 20 minutes or so and then apply a non shimmering top coat.

I really hope this helps those that would like to try out this technique! If you have any concerns or questions you can contact me directly by emailing me at muckingfusser@gmail.com. If you'd like to keep up with my work check out my blog, Instagram and Facebook pages!

Keep an eye out for my "Frequently Asked Questions about Water Marbling" post, coming soon!

Corynn is an American Pre-med student by day and a water marblist by night. She started her nail endeavors back in December of 2012 and cannot get enough of all the incredible polishes to be found. Check her blog out at Mucking Fusser and her Instagram @mucking_fusser.

Ah, giveaways. They are a great way to gain followers and share the nail polish love with your readers. A simple giveaway can be trickier to organise than you may believe.

We’ve done a couple of posts on polish addiction here at Lacquerheads so far – unsurprising considering we are all absolute, diehard polish addicts ourselves. Maybe you’ve read “You Know You’re Obsessed with Nail Polish When…”, and realised you actually are addicted. Perhaps you then read my handy guide for how to justify said addiction to concerned friends and family. Maybe, despite using every trick I offered, you still weren’t able to convince the people in your life that there’s nothing wrong with having 50 almost indistinguishable navy blue polishes – they’re still giving you That Look, and making you feel all guilty. If this is the situation you find yourself in, it’s time to take drastic action. No, of COURSE I’m not talking about culling any of those indistinguishable polishes – I’m talking about smuggling.