The Story
Set,
and then closed over
Chrome is a powder, and powder wants to be the whole story. The atelier lays it thin instead, buffs it until it turns into liquid metal, and only then begins putting things into it. The cabochons go down first and are bedded in clear until their edges cannot be found with a fingernail. The confetti is scattered second and never placed, because scattered confetti has a current in it and placed confetti has a grid. Then the whole tip is closed over with three coats, which is what turns a decorated nail into a sealed one.
Thirty tips travel in the box, running across a wide ladder of widths, so the ten you choose are the ten that actually fit rather than the ten that nearly do. And because the confetti falls differently on every single tip, the twenty you keep back are not duplicates of the ten you wore — they are twenty other lockets, ready for the next time, or for the friend who picks one up and does not put it down.
No two of these are the same, which is the only honest reason to make thirty.