Valentine's Day

Diamond Painting

I’ve stumbled across the craft of diamond painting, which involves sticking resin tiles/diamonds to a sticky canvas.  The tiles are available in both round and square shapes in the whole DMC colour range. This means any cross stitch chart can be turned into a diamond painting! There are kits available but the quality of the kit will vary depending on the size and amount of colours used.  In any case, it is possible to make a diamond painting using a Heaven and Earth Designs chart, which really caught my interest!

Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend…

I’ve decided to jump right in and make Spirit of Flight my first diamond painting! This one was screaming “pick me” and I can really visualize it working well.  The diamonds are 2.5mm each which makes the canvas the equivalent of working on 10 count cross stitch fabric. The finished size of this piece will be about 85 by 113cm...  Just over a meter wide!

Spirit of Flight by Josephine Wall:
Charted by Heaven and Earth Designs

Sorting the Diamonds

I have been using an organizer to keep all my floss containers neat and organized and managed to free up a draw in this for the diamond containers:


Diamond Supplies

The supplies were ordered from the "Little Home" store on AliExpress. The Seller gave me a great deal on a large custom size canvas, bulk lot of diamonds and the tools needed.  I would definitely recommend buying here if you are looking for supplies.   If you are looking for more information on diamond painting, there is a Facebook group called HAED Diamond Painting.   I’d recommend joining the group and asking questions there, or feel free to post any questions here as well! :D

My supplies arrived on the 14th of February. I'm delighted to receive diamonds on Valentine's Day! ;)

90 chart colours sorted!:

Spirit of Flight Start

I've made my start in the bottom right hand corner of the chart:

Hoping to fly through this page and be back with more progress soon!

Happy stitching & lots of love! xxx

Comments

  1. Mii Stitch14 February 2017 at 04:09

    Oooh that's interesting! Never heard of this before but sounds quite fun :)
    Looking forward to seeing your progress!!!
    Lucky you, diamonds for Valentine :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle14 February 2017 at 05:07

      It's been fun so far! Happy Valentine's Day Ingrid ;D

      Delete
  2. D1-D214 February 2017 at 07:17

    this is very cool. How did you figure out which colors to order? Is there a conversion to DMC?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle14 February 2017 at 08:10

      All the diamonds/tiles are numbered to correspond exactly with the DMC floss numbers. E.g The black tiles are numbered 310, corresponding to the black DMC 310 floss, etc 😎 The HAED pattern has a floss usage chart that specifies the colours and the number of stitches used. Refering to this you can work out how many packets of each colour are needed. The 1.3 to 1.4 gram bags have between 210-240 diamonds per packet. So if you take the stitch count for each colour and divide it by 210 you get the number of packets required. E.g. if there are 980 stitches of the colour 815; then you divide 980 by 210, which equals 4.66. Then you need to round to a whole number. So you would need 5 packets of 815. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

      Delete
  3. Justine14 February 2017 at 08:53

    That is going to look amazing! Is it quicker than stitching do you think?

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    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle14 February 2017 at 11:51

      Thank you Justine! It does seem a bit quicker than stitching. Although, I'm using tweezers to put the tiles on and they are a bit fiddly. The pen tool should arrive soon and it will be much quicker and easier to use than the tweezers. The tiles keep flicking everywhere with the tweezers lol! 😜

      Delete
  4. Kaelyn Angelfoot14 February 2017 at 09:35

    I've been DYING to try diamond painting! I just can't bring myself to start ANOTHER hobby right now though, with my current ones being so neglected. *sigh* maybe someday.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle14 February 2017 at 12:11

      Yes, I can understand that... The diamond painting is apparently much quicker to finish though. It's also nice to have something different to work on if you're wanting a break from cross stitch. I hope you will be able to try one someday😊 They are really pretty!✨✨✨

      Delete
  5. Natascha Kooijman15 February 2017 at 12:36

    I am making a diamond painting. Actually, I started I think about a year ago. Not custom,but one of the collection on Ali. And I think it's great fun to do.
    But most of my interest still goes to stitching. The stitches can be a lot smaller and that is what I love.
    But I have a few of them and will make them. It is a great, relaxing hobby.
    I can't wait to see this grow.. It's going to be huge.
    Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle15 February 2017 at 16:10

      I'd love to see the diamond painting Natascha! Dust it off and do a bit lol! I'll be keeping an eye out for it on your blog! 😉 This one is pretty massive... I really like the way they catch the light & sparkle though✨✨✨

      Delete
  6. Faith...17 February 2017 at 15:57

    Sounds very interesting! I am so looking forward to seeing your progress on this piece. I imagine the square pieces are used for whole Xs in cross stitch but what would the circles be used for?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle17 February 2017 at 17:30

      Thanks Faith! The round diamonds are used on a canvas that has been printed on as they don't provide full coverage. Some kits have partial areas to fill in, with printed areas that are not covered in diamonds. The round diamonds seem to be especially popular in these type of kits :) Square diamonds are definitely the go for a blank white canvas that needs full coverage though!

      Delete
  7. Lady Stitch-a-Lot18 February 2017 at 10:05

    I heard about Diamond Painting and I even got myself a small kit to try it. I didn't know they had so many Colors available, maybe I should try doing a haed, after all I have enough wonderful Patterns in my stash ;-)

    I came across Ali Express before, but I think they don't accept PayPal, which is a Problem for me since I don't own a credit Card. But I am thinking about getting a Visa, so I might come back to Ali Express ;-)

    How do you decide how many Diamonds to get? Do you just order some and reorder once they are used up or do you (roughly) know how many there are in one bag?

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    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle18 February 2017 at 16:39

      The HAED's get pretty big! I was initially going to start with something smaller, like a SK or Ornament but Spirit of Flight kept calling me. It makes sense to find a pattern you'd like to do in your stash :D

      AliExpress don't use PayPal but I'm pretty sure they accept prepaid credit cards... So that may be another option if you didn't want to commit to a long term card.

      The Seller I purchased from had 1.3 to 1.4 gram packets, each holding between 210-240 diamonds. I calculated the amount of packets for each colour using the floss usage list (please see my example in the comments above) :)

      Delete
  8. Karen22 February 2017 at 15:47

    I saw some of the Diamond painting o youtube but the whole kit of the painting, I dind't know you can use your patterns an buy what you need of diamonds, very interesting Megan I will follow your progress very close maybe I fall in the new hobby :)

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    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle22 February 2017 at 16:50

      Yes, it's heaps of fun Karen! I'm loving it and think it's definately worth trying. You can buy blank white canvas in custom sizes on AliExpress. You find the size of your canvas by multiplying the stitch count of the lengh & width dimensions by 0.25cm, then add a border. For my border I added 8 cm all the way round. This is where I purchased: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Specified-custom-size-White-canvas-diamond-painting-cross-stitch-diamond-embroidery-plaid-Diamond-painting-Square-diamond/1836685_32792519344.html?spm=2114.12010608.0.0.2BH48F. Thank you again for the Spirit of Flight chart, I'm so happy to be finally getting some good progress on this piece 💙🔹💙🔹💙

      Delete
  9. Heather27 February 2017 at 20:17

    I've seen these before and they're very intriguing. I'm excited to watch your progress on this!

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    1. Megan Joelle27 February 2017 at 21:08

      Thanks Heather! I'm zooming through it and will be posting progress soon😁

      Delete
  10. Eponases23 March 2017 at 03:21

    Omg! What is this? It looks awesome and I want one! :)
    I think I have found my next project - Thanks Megan! :D

    -Linda

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Megan Joelle23 March 2017 at 04:12

      They are so much fun Linda😁 I hope you will have a chance to make one!💙🔹💙🔹💙

      Delete

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