Removing stones

[momsk8er]

Does anyone have any advice about how to remove stones? I'm trying to reuse some stones from a costume my dd won't wear again on a new dress for a competition next week.

Thanks!

[Skate@Delaware]

If you used a heat tool, then you can gently re-apply the heat tool to melt the glue. Sometimes that works, but you are left with a glue mark on the costume which will render it sort of unwearable (it's very noticeable).

If you used gemtac or some other type of glue, I really don't know. I don't remove gems too often (only if I make a mistake applying them).

[Sessy]

If you're not gonna use the dress again, just tug and peel. Oh and hotfix stones also come off when re-heated (but only as long as they're hot)

[momsk8er]

ok, we are trying the "tug and peel" method. But they are coming off velvet and they have little tufts attached. Is there any solvent that works for the glue and would get the tufts of velvet off? Or do we just perservere with trying to peel?

thanks so much everyone. especially for the quick reply as we are sitting here in the kitchen trying to do this as I type.

[AgnesNitt]

If you have some fingernail polish remover in the house, give that a try.

[Schmeck]

Use needle tip manicure scissors to cut the extra tufts off. Also, if the stones are on velvet, try cutting them off with a scalpel/razor. Just be extra careful not to cut yourself!

[aussieskater]

Be very careful about peeling the stones off - if they've been attached with decent glue (eg: GemTac), then the glue can bind so well to the stone that the silver backing peels off the stone, rendering it unuseable. I'd try cutting the stones off (as per schmeck) then potentially trashing a few as you find a solvent which will remove the glue without also removing the backing. (When you work out what that solvent is, let us know!)

[RachelSk8er]

Are you planning to use the dress you're peeling off of again? It'll pretty much be trashed, you can't really get that glue off in a way that won't ruin the fabric.

I saw one case where stones were removed from dresses and they put drops of glitter puffy fabric paint over where the glue marks were left. Only jr/sr synchro teams in the US can have stones on their dresses, one college senior team had to recycle them to their collegiate team and they had to remove the stones...there were not a lot of stones on the dresses though. They kind of looked like crap up close once that was done, but from the ice you couldn't tell, they looked fine.

I pulled stones off of a hairpiece I no longer used because they matched what I was using on a dress and I ran out of new stones...as long as you peel very slowly and carefully, you're ok. I lost the silver backing on a few but most of them were re-usable.

[momsk8er]

Thanks everyone. We did this and it worked out pretty well. No we did not plan to use the old dress again - actually it was an old costume. So it didn't matter what it looked like after (and it looked a mess). We found that pulling and then using tweezers to pull off extra glue and fuzz worked best. I tried nail polish remover, but that removes the backing if you leave the stones in it too long. It helped to soften up the glue though, if we just dipped the stones in the remover for about 10 seconds.

[Skate@Delaware]

Thanks everyone. We did this and it worked out pretty well. No we did not plan to use the old dress again - actually it was an old costume. So it didn't matter what it looked like after (and it looked a mess). We found that pulling and then using tweezers to pull off extra glue and fuzz worked best. I tried nail polish remover, but that removes the backing if you leave the stones in it too long. It helped to soften up the glue though, if we just dipped the stones in the remover for about 10 seconds.

Wow! That is so good to know! Not so great about ruining an outfit, but once it's pretty much done with, saving some of the other stones might be useful (especially for the discontinued colors).

I'm almost afraid to ask how many you had to remove???

[momsk8er]

We removed a lot - maybe 200 - it took about an hour and a half.

[londonicechamp]

Hi momsk8er

Wow!!!! That indeed is a lot of stones.

londonicechamp