Preciosa Crystals Rhinestone Shoe Embellishment Tutorial

You can add sparkle to just about anything with our super-sparkly range of high quality Preciosa Flat Back Crystals. It's easy and fun and you can create any look you want with so many colours, sizes and shapes of crystals to choose from.

The following video tutorial is available on the Bluestreak Crystals YouTube channel and shows how you too can bling your favourite heels / shoes with our fabulous range of Preciosa Rhinestone Crystals ready for a glamorous night on the town. Alternatively, you may be preparing to appear onstage and want to dazzle your audience with Preciosa Crystals as they help you steal the spotlight!

The best tools for the job

When embarking on a rhinestone embellishment project there are a few key tools that will help to make the craft process as easy and enjoyable as possible. You will need a way to easily pick up and place each individual crystal and a common mistake is to think that precariously gripping each rhinestone with tweezers is the only way and this is a recipe for endless frustration. A wax tipped crystal picker tool cuts out all of the fuss and struggle, because the wax tip offers the perfect amount of grip for you to be able to grab and place the rhinestones quickly and easily. Suddenly placing rhinestones will feel as easy as drawing with a pencil.

The next extremely handy accessory is a way to store your crystals while you work that can also quickly and effortlessly flip the crystals over so that the front of the crystal is facing up when you need to grab it with the picker tool. The Magic sorting tray is the perfect solution with its efficient design and inbuilt textured surface that offers just enough friction to flip the crystals over when you gently shake the tray. Two styles of the Crystal Picker Tool and the Magic Sorting Tray can both be found in the Tools section on our website.

Perfect crystal placement for a flawless finish

Where you decide to position the rhinestones on an object can vary greatly in complexity depending on the final appearance you hope to achieve. On shoes and other irregularly shapes items it is considered good practice to begin with all of the outlines first, this is because messy edges are easy to spot and hard to hide.

There are three major regularly used embellishment styles, these are referred to as ‘concentric lines’, ‘honeycomb’ and ‘scatter’. On this pair of high heeled court shoes we have opted for the concentric lines approach; with this style of embellishment, the most important element is the ability to see the flowing lines of rhinestones as they wrap around the shape and small gaps between the crystals are acceptable within reason. This focus flowing lines over solid coverage is good when you have purchased a limited number of crystal size options and you are designing your embellishment around curving lines.

‘Honeycomb’ for example would struggle to adapt onto a shoe shape, because in a honeycomb pattern the crystals must fully interlock with no gaps, making it better suited to angular shapes with purely straight sides.

‘Scatter’ is another style that would work on a shoe, however its deliberately random nature can leave the shape looking flatter instead of enhanced. These are all factors to consider before your start committing with your glue and crystals and if you would like to learn more about embellishment technique, we have an Ultimate Guide to Rhinestone Embellishment that can be found in the resources section of our website.

Socials

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact our friendly customer service team via our Bluestreak Crystals website, who will be happy to offer solutions and advice on any crystal queries you might have.

We also upload frequent bite size videos across various social media platforms including Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube Shorts and TikTok where you can pick up tips and tricks along with many fun facts about working with rhinestones that are designed to entertain and inform. Be sure to like and subscribes because we upload daily!

Check out our most popular Preciosa Flatback Rhinestones Crystals