You may want to know what is diamond painting, what are the tips of doing diamond painting, how to seal it or hand it on the wall. Here is the guide for you.
In this guide, we will walk through every aspect of Diamond Painting and help you get an insight into it.

What is Diamond Painting?

An activity called diamond painting is rapidly gaining steam in the crafting world, but what exactly is diamond painting? It’s not painting on actual diamonds, as the name would seem to suggest. This would be a hugely expensive past time that would exclude most crafters from participating. It’s more like paint by numbers, but constructed with tiny sparkling pieces that resemble diamonds and that come together to form a brilliantly cohesive piece. Diamond painting is a wonderful activity for anybody who loves to craft, regardless of their age. Not only will you finish with a wonderful piece, but you will also gain meditative benefits. Diamond Painting is also called as diamond cross-stitch, diamond dotz, diamond art and diamond embroidery.

The History of Diamond Painting

The modern Diamond Painting was invented by a company based in China named Guangdong Dazu Yueming Laser Technology Co.,Ltd. A patent was invented in 2010. In the patent, the inventor introduces a new way of doing the decorative paste. In the old-time, the Diamond Painting beads were placed on the velvet. But it is hard to make the glue paste strongly on the velvet. However, it was changed after the new method was invented. People can now place the beads on an adhesive plastic canvas. And the glue could make the beads stick firmly. This history is solely discovered by Diamond Painting FloatingStyles.

It is believed that the Diamond Painting is a combination of the Sand Painting Card and Cross-stitch. In the patent, the inventor cited a patent of the Sand Painting Card of how it is designed. The inventor tries to combine the way of how the Sand Painting Card produces the drawing pattern with the plastic canvas. And then the user could place the beads easily and follow the pattern like doing Cross-Stitch.

Diamond Painting gets popular since 2017 according to google trends. Before 2017, the diamond painting keyword was cold in the google trend. Nearly nobody search.

What's the Benefits of Doing Diamond Painting

Now, its time to tell you why you should start a diamond painting. Like most of the craft, diamond painting has some benefits that can make your life better. Believe it or not, some of our customers reply to us by saying that doing diamond painting makes them feel healthy and peaceful.

an email from one of our customers

Let me just name some benefits.

• Build a good relationship with friends and family. You can do the diamond painting with your friends and family. Talk and play with making the craft. Cooperation makes you guys a team. A true team. And a team means you all are united.
• Relax and feel peaceful. Placing beads according to the canvas is easy but also challenge. It is easy to place beads, but hard to follow the numbers. While following the numbers, your mind may resist doing that, but after some time, you will find that you can tame your mind. And wander with the diamond painting. The strength of diamond painting comes from a pattern, i.e, taming your mind to listen to your heart.
• Good for health. After having a good mood, your health will turn good automatically. Facing people with a smile will also draw others' attention to you. It is also a way to make you feel confident.
• Make you focus. Have you wondered why you feel distracted by the thing you are doing all the time? The reason is simple. You have been playing phones all the time and receiving information in pieces too much. Doing diamond painting will take you a bulk of time. So you need to make your attention to just the diamond painting. It is the same as the mediation. Relax and control your breathing.
• Happiness. Well, when you finish doing a craftwork, you will feel happy while seeing the full picture of it. It is very small happiness, but it can accumulate. 

 

How Can I Start?

Diamond painting kits are readily available. They come in varying sizes and cater to all skill levels. Each diamond painting kit generally comes with a design chart printed fabric, diamonds of different colors, a tool to apply the diamonds, and a container of wax.

Each packet comes with a chart and legend, and the packages of diamonds are separated based on color. The chart will be sticky in order to allow the diamonds to stick. How you choose to tackle your piece depends on you. Some prefer to work one color at a time and some prefer to go row by row.

 

When you start, your chart will be covered with a sticky film that is meant to maintain the stickiness of the surface and to keep the product clean. It’s generally a good idea not to take the entire film off at once, because you want to be careful not to damage the painting.

Before you begin, you will absolutely want to make sure that you understand the canvas upon which you are working. This will lessen the possibility for mistakes a great deal.

The Easy Video Tutorial

If you still have not yet acquired the way to do the diamond painting, don't worry. Here is the video tutorial for you. It is simple but elegant.

 

What Size To Choose From

Diamond Painting can be made into different sizes. But the problem is that people don't know the size to choose from. The problem will be easily broken down as below.

1. A tight budget user who want to buy a small size diamond painting
2. A high budget user who want to buy a big size diamond painting

But the problem is not only related to the budget and size but also how many details you want from the diamond painting. You should care about this problem even if you have a high budget. I have seen many customers with a low budget and bought a detailed diamond painting. Then they came to me and complaint that the products are really bad. However, I have also seen customers with a low budget bought a less detailed one and told me that the picture is really good.

Hight budget customers will often make a mistake that they could put many objects in the diamond painting and make then look good. I would say, this is wrong.

So for the size, my suggestion would be as below.

1. For size, less than 30*30cm, choose a less detail one. Better with only one object in the photo. Don't choose a complex one.
2. For size larger than 30*30cm but below 50*50cm, you can have at most two objects in the photo. A less complicated picture would be ok for this size.
3. For size larger than 50*50cm, choose at most 4 objects in the picture.

To visualize, you can refer to the picture below.

What Tools Do You Need for Your Project 

For the tools, it depends on how large your project is and the working environment you have. Let's break down the problem.

If you have a very large project, say 50*50cm, to make. Go for a storage box. Personally, I prefer the tictac box one. You can organize your beads easily with the DMC number written on it. 

If you prefer to work in a dark environment, you shall go for a light pad or a light pen. It will help you reveal the symbol on the canvas.

If you can see the symbol on the canvas easily, you may need a magnification glass.

For more tools info, you can refer to this article Diamond Painting Tools You Need for This Amazing Craft.

 

Different Kinds of Diamond Paintings

Normal Diamond Painting

There are two different types of normal diamond paintings that you can choose from: the square drill and the round drill. Drill will also be called as bead. In the diamond painting terms, they are the same meaning. One uses diamonds that are square in shape, and the other uses diamonds that are round. If you prefer cleaner pictures that look more like a mosaic, then you will prefer the square drill. If, on the other hand, you like a painting that looks more like a cross stitch piece, then you will likely prefer the round drill. Some say that the round drill is better for more intricate details. Some choose their painting based on these facets, and others simply because they like the picture itself. Both have positive aesthetic qualities and it can’t hurt to try them both!

In addition, if you don’t feel ready to tackle an entire canvas on your own, there are some that are partially pre-printed.

Special Diamond Painting or Bedazzled Diamond Painting

Besides round bead diamond painting and square bead diamond painting, there is also a special and beautiful kind of diamond painting. It is called special diamond painting or bedazzled diamond painting. Unlike normal diamond painting, the bedazzled diamond paintings are designed especially with shining drills. Those beads will have different sizes. Most of them look like real diamonds. 

As you can see, the drills are different

Those drills are called AB drills. They look like crystal also. If you want a bling-bling one, I would recommend you to buy a bedazzled diamond painting. However, due to the difficulty of the design, there won't be many styles of special diamond painting. You can only have a few choices.

LED Diamond Painting

The LED diamond painting is a kind of diamond painting with led on the back of the diamond painting. Once charge with the power, the led will shine through the beads and looks vividly. Without the led turned on, it will look like a normal diamond painting. The LED diamond painting is the best gift for the children.

On and off, you will have different effect. Beautiful in the night.

Diamond Painting Gifts

If you want to bring some little gift to your friend, there are some kinds of diamond paintings that you can choose from. The first one I would mention is the diamond painting keychain. It is easy to bring with and with careful design. 

Most of the diamond painting keychain is designed specially. Therefore, you can also call them bedazzled diamond painting.

The second would be the diamond painting greeting cards. The diamond painting greeting cards are greeting cards with the diamond painting on it. You need to first finish doing the diamond painting and then give it to your friends. If your friends are the same as you, I mean, diamond painting lovers, this gift will be the best one.

The DMC Color System of Cross-Stitch and Diamond Painting

You may wonder why the diamond painting is also called diamond cross-stitch or diamond embroidery. The reason is simple. Firstly, they all follow a pattern to finish some artwork. Secondly, they use the same color system, i.e, the DMC color system. So the people who did cross-stitch before will naturally call it diamond cross-stitch.

The DMC color system is a complex system made by the DMC company. They use this color system to name their threads. The diamond painting inherits the same color system of cross-stitch. There are 489 colors in the system.

Due to the limitation of the colors of the system, it will not be good for a color complex picture and hence you will see some color distortion from some finished works. That's normal and you don't need to worry too much.

A portion of dmc color chart

If you encounter the missing beads issue from the diamond painting you have ordered, you need to report the DMC color number to your seller for the missing beads. The symbol on the canvas is not accurate.

Make Your Own Paint

For some reason, you may not find the picture you want in the store. Or you want to make your picture into a diamond painting. Then you need the Custom Diamond Painting or Make Your Own Paint.

For the make your own painting, you can send your picture to the seller and they will turn your picture into a diamond painting and send it back to you. Most of the time, you don't need to worry if the picture is ok for the custom diamond painting or not. But there are some cases you need to take care of before sending it to the seller.

Firstly, the picture could not be too dark or with too many dark colors. The 310 DMC color will be all over the picture and all for you the recognize the details. For example, a black dog in a dark environment.

the detail of this picture will be hard to be seen

Secondly, the picture size should be large enough if you have many objects in the picture. For example, if you want to make a picture holding 3 people inside, the minimum size would be 60*80cm. If you have a size smaller than this one, you will have no detail at all. It will be just pixels only.
Besides, if the objects in the picture are too small, you may need to crop the picture to enlarge the object you want to emphasize. Example below:

 

What Can I Do With a Finished Diamond Painting?

There are a number of ways that you can display your completed artwork. The most popular and the easiest is to simply frame and display it. You can also sew it onto a piece of fabric and make a wall hanging. Small pieces make really incredible journal or scrapbooking covers.

You can click here for the stretcher bar to frame the diamond painting.

However, since the beads on the canvas may fell off due to some reasons. You may need to seal it to avoid such an issue. Then you will need the Mod Podge or PVA glue. Personally, if your diamond painting is of high quality, you don't need to worry about this. The glue on the canvas shall be adhesive enough to hold the beads tightly.

You can see the final project from our customer here. And I have also attach one of them in the below. After framing, the diamond painting will be very beautiful.

 

Happy Customers From Our Store

So, Where to Buy the Diamond Painting?

Many stores provide diamond paintings. What you need to care about are their customer service and product quality. The problems may arise will be:

1. Missing beads. This issue is easy to encounter. Not every store will respond to the customer for the beads. Stay away from those stores.
2. Canvas creased. It will be very hard to flatten the canvas. Fortunately, our store has made the package better and the canvas will not be creased easily.
3. Design problem. The picture will be distorted and the color may not be correct. Some stores will resend a new one with the correct design. But some may just disregard the customer.

You shall always look into the review before you choose your diamond painting. Don't just look at the price only. Usually, a low price will indicate a bad customer server and bad quality.

So my recommendation would be our store. However, you can choose other stores and compare.

 

Although a relatively new art form, diamond painting is gaining attention in the arts and crafts world. Not only because it provides the creator with a stunning product that he or she can display or give away as a gift, but also because the act of creating it has many mental health benefits due to irs relaxing nature.

Now If you feel good with diamond painting, visit FloatingStyles for more :)