Board game bling

Shelby Hill likes rhinestones. Under the moniker Six Lines & a Dot — a reference to her last name, Hill — she spends hours per day gluing sparkly gems on all sorts of things: Crocs, a Lego head, an olive oil bottle. But what she's most known for, and what she spends much of her time on, is bedazzling board games. 

It all started after Hill saw a crystallized Pez dispenser at a luxury department store. It cost $15,000, she told Mothership. I could do that, she thought. And so she did. Hill started her social media accounts dedicated to rhinestoning in 2023, posting on and off. She posted her bedazzled art: a gorgeous mini pothos plant, a full-sized coin pusher machine, a trading card deck holder. Then, the Monopoly board. Hill posted her progress in 2025 working on the Monopoly board each day; her account started to take off. Quickly, the bedazzled board games became her thing. She's bedazzled Sorry!, a chess board, Candyland, and several others. By 2026, she started posting consistently, many videos wracking up tens of thousands to a million views.

"I'm pretty consistent with it," Hill said. "It's kind of my job now."

Bedazzling is in. Hill said it started several months ago. "Over the summer, the rhinestone craze went viral," she said. "There was an overflow of people bedazzling. I don't know if it's the easy access to get into it, or if there was a big video that went off — there was the rhinestone car that was really big."

Rhinestoning has always been a thing. But it really became a thing at the start of 2026. Google posted some statistics on its Instagram page in March: "Searches for bedazzle are at an all-time high, officially shattering the record set back in 2010." And as of September, local news publication King 5 reported that searches increased by 726% over the past few months. Bedazzling, it said, "generated 1.08 million searches globally over the past six months" on TikTok.

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Becca Green, a rhinestone artist and content creator, has been bedazzling since 2012. That's when she got sick, and was "bed bound," she said. "I went on search[ing] for indoor hobbies," Green told Mothership. "I discovered on YouTube the world of crystals and bling. I became fascinated with it and bought [my] first pack to rhinestone makeup brushes, hats and phone cases."

Green is the rhinestone artist who bedazzled her entire car, a Honda CRV. She wrapped the car in vinyl, then painstakingly glued rhinestone after rhinestone onto the car. She said she got more than 716 million views across platforms for the series; Green said a lot of people tell her she inspired them to bedazzle, but doesn't credit herself with the resurgence.

"I think what’s driven the recent bedazzling boom comes down to a few things — trend reemergence," Green said. "A lot of Y2K styles have been popular this year for generations who didn’t have a chance to rock that style."

It makes sense. Hill's work has a sense of nostalgia, too, though the games she's bedazzled aren't necessarily from the 2000s — not even close. Nostalgia is always resonant. Green said the hobby has become less expensive over the years, too. It's easier to join in.

"Back then, Swarovski stones were gold standard and that came with a price tag," she said. "I remember paying $50 for 1,440 stones. That was a lot [for] a teenager."

It's much easier to buy a kit with everything you need, either online or at a retail store. (Green warned, though, that cheap kits may come with toxic glue. She recommends buying a safer adhesive yourself.) "Back then it was either your stones looked amazing or cheap," she said. "Now we have in between."

Hill documents the process of her bedazzled board games across social media in a series format, something people can keep coming back to each day. The series holds her best performing videos, she said. "I think it's what brings people into the channel, and I see a lot of comments like, 'My show's on.'" Hill has only played with one of the board games once, Hues and Clues, and has some videos using the board. The draw is the creative process.

People want to feel a part of the creative process, and the little videos, day after day, keep people involved as Hill rhinestones board games. It breaks the time-consuming process — Hill said she rhinestones anywhere from two to nine hours a day — into manageable pieces. A viewer doesn't have to do the work themselves, but still get the satisfaction of seeing something come together in a sparkly, engaging way. Hill is not always filming, though. She also does custom orders on all sorts of things, as well as brand collaborations. A custom board game, though? That'd cost upwards of $1,000, given how time-consuming and resource-heavy it is.

"I love it though, because I can turn my mind off and I can just zone out," Hill said. "I think that's why I like it, because I have a bunch of anxiety, and it really helps with being anxious. I can turn it off and go to a different place in my mind, and you end up with something beautiful at the end."