Diamond Painting Kits Buyers Guide
This diamond painting kits buyers guide will help you choose the right diamond painting kit, choosing the wrong kit could make or break whether you will love this craft or hate it.
Just What Is Diamond Painting?
Diamond painting or diamond art is the process or taking an existing image and using a color-coded guide, you will apply diamond drills or plastic beads, to a sticky canvas using a pen (stylus) applicator. Once the image is finished, the diamonds will give the image more of a multidimensional look. This guide is for buying a diamond kit, click this link if you are looking for a how to guide for diamond painting.
Where Can I Buy Diamond Painting Kits?
Diamond painting kits are sold at numerous craft stores and other online retailers. Selections may be limited at most stores. You may want to have your own custom diamond painting kits created as not all stores carry a very large selection of designs.
So let's break down what you need to look out for as you choose the best diamond kit to start with.
Diamond Painting Kit Buying Tips
1. Round Drill or Square Drill - What this refers to is the shape of the diamond painting drills. Drills are the colored resin beads that will come with your artwork that you will apply to the canvas. Which bead you choose to use is really a personal choice. Round drills or beads, either side will go down on the canvas and stick to it. With a square drill or bead, the bottom is flat and gets stuck to the canvas, the pointing side sticks up from the canvas. Square drills are slightly more popular, but again, it is all up to you which shape of diamond drill you wish to use.
2. Size of your diamond painting canvas - The size of your canvas is typically shown in centimeters (cm). This is because the craft first became popular in Europe so the sizing has carried over. Typically, beginner sizes are 20x25cm, intermediate kits are 30x40cm up to about 40x60cm, expert kits would be those over 60x60cm. When you increase in size of the canvas, you increase the detail in the finished product, but you also increase the number of colors and length of time it will take to complete your diamond painting kit.
3. Full drill or partial drill - What does full drill diamond painting mean? Full drill is a term that means the entire canvas is covered in diamonds or drills. A partial drill means that some of the area is covered with painted artwork. 5D diamond art refers to full drill diamond painting, 3D diamond art typically refers to partial drill canvas. Typically, you will always want to choose the full drill.
Now that you know about diamond painting kits, it is time to choose your kit. For beginners, you should typically start with a smaller size. The reason being is that you will run into a number of issues typically as you learn how to do a diamond painting kit. But if you are an experienced crafter, start with a 30x40cm and go bigger as you complete more diamond art kits. So now you have information on buying your kit, what else should you get for your paint with diamonds experience.
Diamond Painting Tools and Accessories
1. Storage Boxes - Storage boxes are the most popular accessory and with good reason. Constantly, going from one diamond color to the next can be quite stressful and having good storage solutions will allow you to keep and store leftover diamonds as well. It is good to keep additional diamonds especially of colors you are fond of as once your skill level improves, you may want to improvise new designs. Saving additional diamonds also acts as insurance should you be missing diamonds or if you have an accident and spill diamonds. Loosely stored diamonds can be a nightmare, storage boxes are great at solving these issues.
2. Light Tablet - Light tablets are extremely helpful. By using the light tablet, you are putting an adjustable bright light behind the canvas to brighten up the color guide on the canvas. So those of us that need some light get a boost by using these. The most popular size is the A4 light tablet, A4 is approximately 8.5 x 11 inches. We also now sell light tablet holders and light tablet bags.
3. Upgraded Pens - Using an ultra pen, or an upgraded diamond art pen is very helpful on your hands. Often by using the smaller lightweight pens your hand will start to cramp. By having pens of multiple sizes and weights, your hand will feel less stress on certain muscles and allow you to work longer with less pain. It would be best practice to have multiple diamond pens until you find what works best for you.
4. Magnifying Glasses - Magnifiers for diamond painting can be very helpful for those of us that struggle to see the sometimes tiny codes on the canvas. There are glasses, LED tabletop magnifiers and stand-alone magnifiers, all of which will help you see a bit better.
We have updated this diamond painting buyers guide for 2019 and hope you find it very helpful. If you see something we should add, don't hesitate to contact us at fun@freediamondpainting.com