They are plastic canes - and they are used a lot for nail art too. They come in all manner of different designs - and the idea is you slice a thin layer off the end with a sharp blade and apply the slice to whatever you're doing.
I have found since I've been using them though, that it works out quite expensive to buy single canes with specific designs. In order to get round that, I buy bunches of random ones and just hope there will be something useable in the bunch. Because of this I now have hundreds of them, which up until about ten minutes ago were scatttered on the floor of my flat as the box decided to take a dive from where it lives on the bookcase. This was really annoying, but did give me a reason to sort them out.
Most of them are fruit slices; thankfully - as these are really useful. The others are patterns and flowers, which I'm starting to incorporate into different designs. I also have a pile of animals - which I find really hard to use and a pile of stuff I have no idea what to do with. This pile mainly consists of bows, Chinese opera face masks and little smiley faces. Despite the randomness, it's the animals I have most difficulty finding a use for.
Whilst I was sorting out the rest of the stuff that decided it wanted to be on the floor - I found these. I've had them for ages. They are tiny glass vials, in various sizes with little caps.
I also have these - nail glitter; which is the crafting equivalent of a highly infectious disease and something called "crystal beads" - little glass beads - that I dragged out of bargain bin in a craft store in Antwerp.
Removing a slices from the end of a couple of the fish canes gives me this...
If I throw all of the stuff into one of the vials, I get this...
I don't want to use water in the vial because it will evaporate, so my search for something more viscous lead me to the pharmacy in town. Actually it lead me to two pharmacies as the lady in Boots tried to sell me senna tablets as a subsitute.
Gently adding oil to the vial with a dropper, then sealing both the plastic and metal stoppers in with superglue gives the final product.
It's a start I guess. Still not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of them though!