Where I Buy My Deco Items

I've gotten a few questions about where I buy my deco stuff, and I've never been able to give a thorough response in the interest of having a quick answer. I decided to take some time to track down, to the best of my ability, where I bought many of my deco/nail deco pieces. [However, it's important to note that I haven't bought from any of these places in almost a year because I'm pretty well stocked, so please consider more recent reviews if you see them.]

I actually have quite a few pieces, and I'm kind of hoarding them instead of using them...I first started collecting nail art deco pieces, and then later when I saw all the people making their own deco phone cases on Tumblr, I figured that was something that I could probably do myself and started looking for larger items as well.

This list isn't really important to look at, but for awhile, I tried to keep track of what pieces I bought and from where. If it weren't for this, I probably wouldn't be able to include a lot of info in this post lol. If you're looking for something specific that I have, you can try and find it here.

 

The first place I went to look was eBay (search: "nail art rhinestones" or "nail art deco" or basically anything close to that). That's where I got most of the rhinestone wheels and is, imo, the best place if you want cheap stuff but don't necessarily care about A+ quality or shipping time. I don't have a single seller that I buy from regularly, but one that I bought from multiple times was "e.metro". However, you can find many decent sellers on eBay if you look at their feedback score. To me, a good price is $1-$3 (with free shipping). Just as a minor warning, most of the cheap rhinestones can get cloudy when applied. I personally don't care about it too much since I usually remove them after a week, but if you want the crystal clear ones, you'll have to pay a higher price and might want to look for the Swarovski rhinestones.

I have also bought from Fullmoon multiple times. She provides a good variety of quality product for both nail deco and regular decoden + other stuff, and I do recommend it.

The prices are not extremely cheap, but not extremely expensive either. I had ordered nail deco bows from her in the past and when they arrived, one was broken so I emailed her, and we worked out a solution with no problems.
I've also bought from Yukiumi before with no problems.

Probably the best place I found to search for cabochons (smaller and bigger pieces) is Etsy. Looking at my spreadsheet, I've bought from (Etsy seller names) Blingers, happybaby8222, misssapporo, RoppongiKitsch, and SoiFlower.
My favorite seller of them was misssapporo. Good quality items and good selection. That's where I found the My Melody heads (among other great pieces).

I went to Blingers for rhinestones. They're not Swarovski-quality, but they're better than the super cheapy eBay ones.

I'm not 100% sold on the quality of happybaby8222 (it's like maybe a B tbh), but the prices were good.

There wasn't anything special I remember about ordering from SoiFlower so to me, that means that the transaction went well.

I also bought quite a number of items from RoppongiKitsch.

I had a problem with the quality of a few of the products I received and the owner sent me new ones without me having to return the bad ones + she paid for the shipping and included an extra item. So 10 points good customer service, but be aware that the quality can possibly be not overly great although perhaps they were reflected in the prices which were very reasonable. If you *do* end up having problems, the owner is very responsive.
Other sellers that you might want to consider - MimiLoLo, delishbeads, PixieKhloe and SophieToffeeCo.

For eBay and Etsy, my advice is to take some time to search around for a bit because it is possible that there are multiple sellers listing the same or very similar items but for different prices. If you want to keep your total down, a little searching can go a long way sometimes. Also, please be sure to look at the measurements for each item because 7mm items can actually be pretty big for nails.

Some photos of me trying to do my own nail art. I freely admit that some of these are pretty fffing bad, but over time, I think I've improved a bit. In case you were wondering, my most used size of rhinestone is probably 2mm.

IMO, nail art is definitely something you can do yourself if you have the right materials, look at (pictures of) professional nail art for inspiration and practice! I wish I knew how to use gel or acrylic because that would allow these things to last longer, but I'm just as happy changing my nails every week so I guess that's okay lol. I know they sell kits almost everywhere now, but I'm just not willing to splurge on it yet haha.

I've only attempted to do a decoden phone case once, and it did not turn out very well lol.

No real pictures of the actual attempt with silicone and stuff, haha. I think I took one picture but I've definitely deleted it. It was not great. I bought all the stuff to create a whole bunch of cases and such but that just didn't happen because once you glue/place a cabochon, you basically don't get it back and I'm afraid of "wasting" them haha.

In short, try searching eBay and Etsy and look at each individual seller's feedback, but you also might consider trying Fullmoon and Yukiumi as well :)

Tbh, if you wanted any of my decoden stuff, I'd probably sell it to you since I'm not using any of it really lol. Not the nail deco items though because I find them much more useful haha. 

If you're interested in the cases I keep my items in -
 My dad got the bigger clear plastic container with blue snaps from a fishing supply store.
 I bought the smaller clear plastic case with purple snaps from Wal Mart in the sewing section.
 The cloudy 8 compartment (4/4) pill cases are from Etsy (seller CuppiecakeSprinkles).
 The longer 12 compartment (6/6) cases are from eBay and some of the compartments open too easily and others are impossible to open [in the second picture of this post but not seen above].
 The crystal clear 10 compartment (5/5) cases were a gift bought in Japantown in SF specifically advertised for deco pieces.
 The pink/purple caboodle I've had since I was a child and I'm not sure where you can get one now.