You Need Your Lash Glue Close to Hand, but How Close Is Too Close?
Whether you’ve been in the lash industry for five minutes or five years, you’re sure to have heard of glue rings. They’re a convenient way to keep your glue close to hand – literally! While we can’t deny that having your glue so close to your immediate working area is convenient, it comes at a cost that few Lash Techs are aware of before it’s too late. If you’ve not considered a jade stone for your lash extension glue before, hear us out! This may change the way that you lash forever…
Sustainability
Ditching glue rings in favor of jade stones is more sustainable because you have less single-use plastic waste when using a jade stone than you do when using a glue ring. While you do still have a glue stone sticker or some tape to get rid of, the single use plastic waste is still reduced.
To offer a counterpoint, you can put some Saran wrap or some foil on the glue ring to make it reusable, but consider that Saran wrap is still more plastic waste than a glue stone sticker and that foil is a great conductor of heat, so it can cause your glue to cure more quickly as you’re working. Foil is a marginally better type of waste than plastics because it can (sometimes) be recycled, but once there’s cured glue on it, it’s no longer recyclable, so this becomes a moot point at any rate.
Glue Fumes
Using a glue stone keeps glue fumes away from your airways and from your clients’ airways which makes the treatment safer and more comfortable for both of you. We’ve got a really in-depth blog post about glue fumes here, so make sure to check that out if you’re in the dark when it comes to the subject.
The long and short of it is though, that when you work with a glue ring, you’re holding the glue right by your face. Even if you’re wearing a face mask while you work, you’re still being exposed to more fumes than you would be if you were using a jade stone instead of a glue ring. It’s not uncommon for Lash Technicians to become allergic to eyelash extension glue fumes, so do what you can as soon as you can to minimize that risk so that you can avoid cutting your career as a Lash Technician short.
To improve ventilation and reduce the effects of eyelash extensions glue even more, it's worth considering a Glamcor Flow.
Better Control
It’s easier to control the temperature and humidity surrounding your glue when it’s on a jade stone. Having it closer to your airways—as we’ve established—isn’t great for your respiratory system, but it also increases the humidity around your glue. As well as this, having it sitting against your hand will make it warmer than having it on a jade stone, which means that it will cure faster and will impact your lash retention. Keeping your glue on a jade stone will help it to stay cool, and therefore fresher for longer.
Speaking of control, when using a jade stone, it’s so much easier to control how you’re dipping your lash extension into the glue, so you’re far less likely to get too much glue on the base of your lash extensions. There are a few reasons why it’s important to control the way that you dip your extensions:
👉 Not enough glue and you’ll have bad retention
👉 Too much glue and you’ll have lots of stickies
👉 Dipping volume fans in too far will cause them to close when you let go of them
Take a look at this blog post for everything you need to know about perfectly dipping your lash extensions – it’s not as easy as it seems!
More Bang for Your Buck
You actually use less glue when you use a jade stone, even though you need to dispense a new drop every 10-20 minutes during the treatment. By using a glue ring, you dispense more glue which you use throughout your treatment, and it’s unlikely that you’ll need to top that up.
If you do add new glue to the glue ring part way through the treatment, your glue isn’t actually going to be able to perform as well as it could be. When we add new glue to old glue, the old glue causes the new glue to begin curing as the older glue has. When we dispense our glue drops onto a jade stone, we’re able to place new drops further away from older drops, which means that the new drops stay fresh for far longer. Fresh glue = happy glue.
It’s also easier to control the amount of glue you’re dispensing with a jade stone, which means that you get more use out of it in the long run, and more value for money by extension. Using a glue ring often leads to more glue than you need being dispensed, which means that you’ll get through your glue faster, and in turn, you’re more than likely spending more money on eyelash extension glue than you need to be.
Extend Your Glue’s Life
Following on directly from the above point, By dispensing more glue you have to squeeze the bottle instead of letting gravity do the work. If that sounds like a silly thing to say, stick with us for a second.
When we squeeze glue out of the bottle, air is sucked back in when we release the squeeze. This is not very good for our glue on two counts:
👉 Air contains moisture, which is glue’s arch nemesis. Moisture being sucked back into the bottle means that we’re actively shortening our glue’s lifespan by starting the curing process before it’s even been dispensed.
👉 Air that ends up inside the bottle will want to leave, and when it does so, it will take some glue with it. This is one of the main reasons that glue nozzles get stuck inside their lids, which is definitely not something that you want to happen if you want your glue to last for as long as it should.
Top Tips for Using A Jade Stone
If you’re switching to a jade stone after using a glue ring for a long time, we salute you! But there are some things to keep in mind.
With glue rings, you’re more than likely throwing them in the trash when you’re done with your lash set, so you’re unlikely to be covering the ring with anything. With jade stones, you can, of course, dispense the glue straight onto the surface of the stone, but you’re going to have a much easier time if you use a glue stone sticker or some tape.
By covering the stone’s surface, you save a lot of cleanup time as you can just peel off the tape or sticker, instead of waiting for the glue to dry to remove it with lash extension glue remover, meaning that you also save your lash adhesive remover for when you actually need it to remove eyelash extensions.
The benefit of using tape instead of a jade stone sticker is that you’ll get more of an arched glue drop, which makes dipping marginally easier. If you are doing this though, it’s best to use three or four strips of tape, as using just one means that the tape will tear under dried glue, and you’ll end up with the same issue that you were trying to avoid by using tape. In an ideal world, we’d remove the tape while the glue was still wet straight after the treatment, but we’ve all been tired and sort of lazy after our last appointment of the day – we’ve struggled so that you don’t have to.
Lastly, a jade stone helps your glue to stay fresh due to its naturally cooler surface. When it’s very hot, you might be tempted to pop your jade stone in the refrigerator for a while to cool it further, but we’d advise against that simply because anything being put into and taken out of a refrigerator has a tendency to play host to condensation, which will negatively impact your lash extension glue. It’s far better just to let your jade stone hang out on your lash trolley until it’s ready to be used, and try not to handle it too much as it will retain heat in the same way that it stays cool.
We know that it’s really common to use glue rings, and if you love using glue rings for your lash extension glue, we can’t stop you, but we do advise swapping to a jade stone if only for the simple reason that it keeps your airways healthier for longer.
