Tips never enough
Diamond paintings can cost a lot and take hours on end to finish, so it is important to learn some tips to make sure the painting goes smoothly and you get the best of your experience. Even if you are a person who tends to try it yourself, good advice will never be enough. So I want to share with you my top 11 tips for diamond painting. 11 things that have really helped me that I’ve slowly picked up along the way. So I want to share them with you and I really hope that this helps you out with your own paintings.
This is inevitably how all your diamond paintings come. They are rolled up and they can be difficult to flat there is a really easy tip for this. So first push it down as much as you can. You don’t need to put books on top and you don’t need to wait for it overnight to flatten it out. All you need to do is lift up the top of the adhesive in each corner and put it straight back down again. This is a simple act of lifting up the adhesive and re-sticking it while it flattens out your canvas. After re-sticking, it has gone from a canvas that desperately wanted to roll back up into a roll to a beautifully flat canvas. After this, you can start working on that no more rolling.
Another way to flatten the canvas is to use an iron. You can put a tea towel over the top of the canvas and iron it on a low heat to reduce and flatten out all those creases. This works much better and quicker than laying heavy books on top.
The second tip that I wanted to share with you, is about your diamond storage system. I honestly think that storage that you choose it just makes the game-changer. So I would really recommend your diamond storage system as soon as you know that you’re going to do more than one or two of these diamond paintings
Get yourself a storage organizing kind of system of some type of bead storage trace. For example, this storage tray holds little containers that can fit about five or six bags of beads in each.
It solves the diamond packages organizing problem when you spend more time searching for colors than you are actually completing your painting.
You don’t have to have a tray like this. There are people who use a shoebox with little Chinese sauce containers. Or TicTac boxes and mark these containers on top with a color number. If you do so, you have your diamonds in a tray in front of you and you can just pick up the colors really easy.
Tip number three is to use the washi tape to protect the edges of your painting. As you pull back this adhesive piece around the edges, you end up with a really sticky edge around. Washi tape – is a masking-like tape. It is super durable and flexible and is available in a variety of widths, textures, patterns, and colors. This tape tears easily and can be safely applied to a variety of surfaces; it doesn’t leave a sticky residue behind
I used to just leave the edges raw. But it filled up with fuzz from my jumpers as I worked. The painting just looked really ugly and it turned gray and fuzzy. So now, when I start a new painting, I just peel back the adhesive layer. Then put a strip of washi tape all around the edge and it keeps the edge really nice and fuzz-free.
The tip number four is about how you work. I did a little research about how you should start your diamond painting. There are different ways: from the bottom or from the top, or even you start right in the middle. The last one is a comfortable way for people, who used to do cross-stitch – they often start in the middle of the canvas. They cut off the square of a protective cover in the middle of the painting and start their artwork from here.
Usually, I start diamond painting in the top right-hand corner because I’m right-handed. I peel back the canvas on the right corner side. Then I work section by section as I fill up the chosen area with diamonds. If I work this way, there’s no chance of me getting the sweat, dust, and fuzz from my arm sticking onto the canvas.
Moreover, I always work from the top because I tend to do bigger diamond paintings. So when I start at the top, I can push this work away from me. And keep working my way down and it is supported on the table that I work on. If I worked from the bottom upwards as I worked this diamond painting would end up sitting hanging over the table being bent on the table edge and would end up sitting in my lap. Also, I could spin it and turn and work on symbols upside down. But then I may make many mistakes, especially when the symbols are 6 or 9.
Good news – you do not need to have a plan for how you gonna work.
With every diamond painting kit, you receive a small piece of red wax. You may use another option for this tool.
I would like to introduce everybody to the Blu Tack. It is a reusable pressure-sensitive adhesive. Commonly it is used to attach lightweight objects (such as posters or sheets of paper) to walls, doors or other dry surfaces. Traditionally blue, it is also available in other colors. Before I started using blue tack I was using the regular red wax that came with the diamond painting kit. I found that I was scraping up that red wax and replacing it. Because it was losing its stickiness sometimes like every 20 minutes or less, so I was constantly replacing it.
Now I use the Blu Tack – I push the pin through just like normal and it fills up with the Blu Tack. It’s fantastic. I find I can refill this nib maybe once every few weeks.
If in your local shop there is no such item, try similar adhesives in Office products. You can try Pritt Multi Tack, or Apli White Tack. They do the same work and are perfect for diamond painting pens.
My next tip is about what to do with those big large areas of one solid color. Many people find it hard to get their diamonds even. They really struggle where there’s a big block of solid color. Their lines go wobbly and they find it hard to keep their diamonds in nice neat rows.
I am placing diamonds in a checker plate fashion throughout the whole area that I am working on one color. If you place them down in a checkerboard fashion you’re placing each individual one down in its own square and it really helps to keep those lines straight. Firstly, you finish your first round of checkerboards. Then you go back and start to fill up these little holes between. This way of doing large and solid color areas is not so tedious and makes neater diamond painting (and of course, looks more professional).
My next tip is about those air bubbles and what to do when you get air bubbles in the adhesive layer of your canvas.
You might notice that there’s a ridge and there the diamonds do not stick down properly. You can use a rolling pin – you can flatten them down, or you can put books. But most of the time as soon as you take those books off, you take the weights off that ridge of diamonds still pops up. It happens because there is an air bubble often a line of a pocket of air in this adhesive layer.
That air needs to be released. I use a little blade just to cut the adhesive layer to release it. Usually, I just give it a little light slice with a blade of any type (DO NOT to push very hard – you don’t want to cut through your canvas). Doing this way I release the air that pocket of air that bubble sits perfectly flat. And you can then paint away with your diamonds on top. They will be as strong as ever because you haven’t moved the adhesive.
When you release all the air bubbles with the little blade by slicing them, and they sit back down perfectly flat and you have no more of those odd ridges where you just get like a line of beads that won’t sit down.
Sometimes you can find so many stuck diamonds in the packages. And it takes time to separate them. Usually, it is an annoying and demotivating process because you use your fingernails to try and pry them apart. But here is a great little tip that I have learned. So I pour all of the stuck (one color) diamonds into my tray I get a second tray, place it on top and squeeze down. You can hear that sound that all of those little diamonds are separating and cracking apart. You may do it twice – give them a shake and repeat – it works so well because after that there are no more stuck diamonds in a tray.
If diamond painting became your hobby and real addiction, I suggest getting an LED light pad. It does not cost much. But it helps especially when you are working in late evenings or you find it difficult working in large areas with very similar symbols. The light pad is almost similar to a board, but with built-in LED lights. The LED lights help to illuminate the canvas from underneath. Also, it hence helps you in making the process less tiresome, and in case of huge, complex canvases, less frustrating.
I put this LED light pad underneath my work. Then I immediately notice the difference between it being on and it being off particularly when I am working on those dark colors or if I am working on symbols that are almost identical.
I like this tool because you can just connect with their little micro USB to one of these portable battery packs. So I can work on any table at my home. This is just the size of an A4 paper. Iit can fit with any diamond painting, or you can use this pad for any other crafting hobby – like painting or even reading.
I would recommend that you get one that’s got the dimmable setting. Because at full strength I find that a little bit too strong. The LED pad lightens all the room, and it is not good for the eyes to look at the light so close, even it is covered with canvas.
Once you’ve finished your diamond painting don’t be shy to go back over your diamond painting and remove any odd colors that you think are in the wrong spot. For example, when a picture is obviously scanned into the computer in China and their software program rendered it into colors and DMC colors. I think, sometimes the color rendering isn’t always perfect. When it pixelates it, sometimes you get these little random pixels of color particularly in shading areas where I don’t think that the software program got it right.
If you find some odd colors in the painting, despite the fact that the diamonds were placed correctly, you can change them into that color, you think it should fit and give the softer look.
Just get your tweezers, dig it out little rogue pixels, that annoy you and that don’t match the colors. If you think you would get a better effect by changing them – change it. It’s your artwork, that is going to hang on your wall. You’d put so many hours into it, and you have the right not to leave with a couple of little rogue pixels there. You can change for a better effect.
Listen to your favorite audiobook while you diamond paint! Watching TV or movies isn’t always practical when diamond painting, but listening to an audiobook is. If I do diamond painting while my family is paying or just watching TV, I do not work as fast as I am concentrated on my audiobook, or I am even listening to Youtube. After finishing a chapter in audiobook or several Youtube videos, I am surprised how far I have done in diamond painting and how relaxed I feel after. This is the way when both my hands and my brains are kept busy.
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