Distinguishing Resin Rhinestones with Crystal Rhinestones by observation

In earlier blog posts, I have mentioned how to distinguish resin rhinestones with crystal rhinestones by heating it with a lighter. Today, I'll talk about another way to distinguish them by naked eye observation.

There are two major ways to distinguish them:

(1) Observing the foiled back of the rhinestones
Swarovski, Czech, and Asian crystal rhinestones all comes with a silvery frosted foiled back. Picture shown as below:

While a plastic, or resin rhinestones, comes with a glossy silver back, as below:

 

(2) Reflections

For crystal rhinestones, the light reflections from the rhinestones are beams of "rainbow color" light rays. While in resin rhinestones, the light reflected are mono-toned, not as colorful as the light reflected from crystal rhinestones. Reflections are difficult to captured with Camera, especially without any professional cameras like me, so I cannot show photos to illustrate this. But I'm sure you can easily observe the difference when you have the two kind of rhinestones on hands.

It is really important to know how to distinguish the two kind of rhinestones before you buy it. Resin rhinestones are much cheaper in price, but it can be easily scratched and lost its luminosity because of the relatively softer material (Resin) used when producing the stones.

Crystal rhinestones are more expensive, but it's more durable and has a longer lasting luminosity.

Make sure you know which rhinestones you're buying before you pays for it, some Sellers sell resin rhinestones as expensive as crystal ones to make big profits.