You probably have some in your arsenal, or at least have seen them in pictures. They are very popular for use as flower middles on 3-D art, and sometimes as edging around a design or whatnot.

What they are not so popular for is embedding into product “rockstar” style.

Well, maybe they are popular for embedding into product, but they sure aren’t popular for removing from product when a client decides to change out a style.

Unless you’re one of those cut-’em-all-off-and-start-over types. If that’s the case, maybe you are unfamiliar with the special sort of misery involved in drilling through these little marbles.

I have tons of them on my Shelf of Glitter Glory — every color I can find. I knew how hard it was to drill through glass from my experience with “Victorian” glitter a few years back. It’s made of real glass and it looked so pretty embedded in the nail, but caused much grief when I tried to employ my standard “just backfill it” method of changing out a color.

I destroyed several arbor bands in the process, but the heat and the smell were the real deterrents that led me to toss that glitter.

So, a few years later, when one of my clients picked up the little jar of pretty, tiny, glass marbles and declared that was what she wanted in her nails, I looked at her and said, “Nu-uh.”

Finally, I told her that I would not be backfilling them. She would just have to wait it out till they had grown out enough to go away. Or we could do the cut-’em-off-and-start-over method. But if I put those suckers in her nails, they were going to stay there.

And stay there they did. Until I insisted on cutting off the tips and starting over. Even trying to drill through them to shorten the nails was an exercise in futility and worn-out bits.

She said she learned her lesson... but she still eyes those little glass marbles and gets starry eyed.