You might think having a pile of diamonds on your dining room floor would be a dream come true, but for me it was a nightmare.
In case you haven’t heard, diamonds aren’t limited to fine gem stones these days. They are miniscule dots of plastic used to make art invented by a sadist.
According to the Diamond Art Club, many crafters describe diamond painting as “diamond embroidery” because of its similarity to cross-stitching and painting-by-numbers. In these kits, however, instead of threads or paints, you are given thousands of resin dots to attach to a sticky canvas. It is reminiscent of pointillism, an art form I enjoyed as a teen and inspired by late 19th century artist Georges Seurat, who’s known for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.”
One of the key selling points of diamond art is it can be done at any age with any level of skill. So when I saw that my 5-year-old granddaughter had mastered it, I thought, “How hard could it be?”
Very, as it turns out.
The theory is pretty simple. My kit contained a plastic pen into which you place a tiny square of wax so the diamonds, or drills as they are also known for some unknown reason, can stick to it. You then place it on the corresponding number or letter on the canvas.
Like any modern craft, I spent the obligatory hour watching YouTube “how to” videos before starting. I should have realized there might be problems ahead when I saw that all of them sped up the process while demonstrating it. It also didn’t take me long to learn that while my kit technically contained everything I would need to make sparkly, plastic artwork, there were a half dozen other things I would also have to purchase.
The color-coded diamonds arrived in individual plastic packets but it soon became obvious they would be much better organized into little plastic boxes. That way I could shake them into the tiny, ridged tray to prepare them for sticking.
I’m not sure what the law of probability is for the tiny diamonds to land facet side down when you sprinkle them into the tray. It’s like heads-and-tails for the very small-minded. My instructional video told me it really didn’t matter if they landed facet-side-up, because all you have to do is shake or tap the tray for them to move. Well, guess what? They certainly do move, but once the ones that were wrong-way-up were corrected, the ones that had been correct were wrong.
The first step in “drilling,” as the sticking process is called, is to peel back a small portion of the cellophane that covers the canvas to prevent it from drying out. Before choosing your first diamond, remember to dig the pen tip into the teeny piece of wax provided so it is also sticky. Like a jeweler, you simply pick up your diamond and pop it into the right place — assuming you don’t need a magnifying glass and craft lamp to see what you are doing.
Once I bought my magnifying glass and craft lamp, things started to improve. I could tell the difference between a Q and a D and realized there were likely to be three shades of purple in space smaller than the top of a pencil. Drilling is not a process to be rushed. I think it’s more about the journey than the destination, which in my case is likely to be to a mental health facility.
The irony is that selling point for diamond art is it’s supposed to be relaxing and meant to help you cope with the stresses of life. I’m assuming that doesn’t apply if one of your stresses is your husband.
“How’s it going?” Grumpy said one Saturday morning.
More Top Picks Best Curio Cabinets
Walking over to my carefully organized spot at the dining room table, he bent over to look at my work without noticing the wire attaching the craft lamp to the outlet in the wall. I’m not someone who loses her temper easily, but within seconds mine was so lost a search-and-rescue team wouldn’t be able to locate it.
It was one of those slow-motion moments. Half my collection of carefully placed boxes flew into the air and landed on the floor beneath the dining room table. Surprisingly, the lids that had been so tricky for me to unlock opened themselves quicker than you could say “open sesame.”
I’ve never been so upset to see a pile of diamonds in my life, not that I’ve seen that many ever obviously.
It didn’t take me long to realize that simply scooping them up would not be an option. Too many colors were combined so the only option was to attack them with the vacuum.
“See what you can rescue,” said Grumpy, feeling the vibration of my anger spreading across the floor like lava. “Surely it won’t matter if you just fill in where you can with what you have left.”
“It’s like painting by numbers!” I shrieked. “You can’t do that! You may as well just do your own painting.” Come to think of it, that might have been easier.
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with my resin covered picture of a tree house if and when I ever complete it. Perhaps I could persuade Grumpy to go and live in it.
Hilary Decent is a freelance journalist who moved to Naperville from England in 2007. She can be reached at [email protected].