Diamond Painting tips and tricks

To make your Diamond Painting artwork even easier to create and to make it a success, we have put together a collection of practical tips and tricks for you. This collection can be especially helpful for Diamond Painting beginners, but even if you have created Diamond Painting pictures more often, you may still be able to learn something new here.

Tip 1: Choose the right size

Especially for Diamond Painting beginners, it is important not to choose a Diamond Painting picture that is too large at the beginning. Although an extra-large canvas creates a particularly great effect, beginners can quickly become overwhelmed with such a large motif. As working on a large project takes a long time, especially if you have little or no practice, it can be easy to feel like you're not making any real progress and that there's no end in sight. To avoid putting the project away in frustration at some point, it is best to start with a motif that is not too large and gradually work your way up to larger motifs. Holding a finished diamond painting in your hands, no matter how large or small, is a beautiful and satisfying feeling. In our Diamond Painting Shop we have a large selection of small Diamond Painting Sets especially for beginners and children.

Tip 2: Round or square diamonds

The glittering Diamond Painting stones are available in either a square or round shape. Diamond stones with a square shape fill the canvas completely, without any gaps, thus creating the classic diamond mosaic picture look. It is a little more difficult to place the square stones correctly at first, but once you get the hang of it and have already placed a few stones, the rows become neater simply due to the square shape of the stones. Round diamond stones, on the other hand, need to be placed less precisely than square diamond stones. The round stones are therefore also suitable for beginners or children. As they are a little easier to place, it is also quicker to cover the entire canvas. However, due to the round shape, there are always gaps between the stones. The square stones are therefore more suitable for a more sculptural end result, but you need some experience, dexterity and precision to place the stones. If, on the other hand, you want faster results and don't want to work so precisely, the round diamonds are the right choice for you. Each Diamond Painting Set contains either round or square glitter stones. If you only want to buy Diamond Painting Sets with a certain stone shape, make sure you check which stone shape is specified in the description. With our exclusive Carat Art sets from the artist collection, you can also choose whether you would prefer to buy your set with round or square stones. No matter which shape you prefer, both shapes glitter and sparkle beautifully like diamonds.

Tip 3: Unroll the Diamond Painting canvas

As your canvas is delivered rolled, it will always roll back immediately after unpacking and unrolling. To effectively prevent this, you can unroll your canvas and lay it face down on a flat surface and weigh it down overnight with a book or other heavy object. Another option is to carefully peel off the transparent protective film at one corner up to about the middle and brush it back onto the adhesive surface. If you repeat this on all four corners one after the other, your canvas should then be nice and flat and no longer curl up.

Tip 4: Opening and labeling the sachets

The diamond stones included in every Carat Art Diamond Painting Set come in small plastic bags, sorted by color. Experienced diamond painters like to transfer these into practical storage containers, but you can of course also leave your diamonds in the sachets. To remove the diamond stones, it is best to cut off a small corner of each bag. This way, you can always pour the stones into your Diamond Painting bowl in portions. If you have poured too many of one color into the bowl or want to take a break and put the stones back in the right bag, you can easily pour them back over the spout of the bowl. To keep your diamond stones safe in their sachets, you can seal the small open corner with a strip of washi tape or adhesive tape until you need this color again. To make it easier to find the colors in the bags, you can draw the matching symbol from the legend on the printed DMC numbers with a waterproof pen.

Tip 5: Sorting and storing your diamonds

In all Diamond Painting Sets, the glitter stones are supplied in small plastic bags. However, these are often a little impractical as the numbers on them are not always easy to see and you always have to spend a long time searching for the right one among all the little bags, especially with larger pictures. Diamond Painting has a total of around 450 DMC colors. Most motifs have between 30 and 60 colors. In order not to lose track when working, you should sort them well. If you regularly paint larger diamond paintings, it is therefore worth filling the stones from the sachets into small, clearly arranged containers and labeling them. You can get creative with the storage boxes and use tins and containers that you already have at home. Medicine cups, tic-tac or film roll tins are suitable for this. You can also find special Diamond Painting storage options in which the glitter stones can be perfectly stored in our Diamond Painting accessories.

Tip 6: Stick individual stones to the edge of the canvas to create a legend

With every Diamond Painting picture, you work with lots of different colors with different numbers, which are simplified in the motif as symbols. It is therefore inevitable that you will repeatedly forget which symbol belongs to which DMC number and therefore to which color. If you want to shorten the search for the right stone color, you can simply stick a matching stone next to the corresponding number and symbol on the legend on the edge of your Diamond Painting canvas. This way, you can see at a glance which stone color you need for the respective symbol. This makes it much easier for many Diamond Painters to keep track and work faster!

Tip 7: Working correctly with the diamonds

When placing the glitter stones on the canvas, you should never work with too much pressure. Otherwise, some of the wax on the pen may stick to the diamonds and affect the shine of your set diamonds. Thanks to the strong adhesive power of your canvas, the stones will stick by themselves anyway, so it is sufficient to only ever apply them very carefully with the pen. However, if there are wax residues on one or more stones, this problem can also be solved. As soon as the diamonds are firmly attached to the canvas, you can simply wipe them off with a damp microfiber cloth. This will easily remove any wax residue.

Tip 8: The right lighting

Diamond painting requires very small symbols and different colors to be recognized on the canvas. To avoid straining your eyes too much and to work in a relaxed manner, you need good lighting. In most cases, normal room lighting is not sufficient and it is advisable to choose a workstation with a good light source such as a bright table or floor lamp. However, a light source that you place directly under your screen to illuminate your screen from below works best. You can use a tablet that you slide under the canvas to illuminate the screen so that you can see darker colors and small symbols more clearly and quickly. However, the surface area of a tablet is usually quite small, which can sometimes be a bit distracting when working. If you notice that you find it much easier to work with light from below, it might be worth investing in a special LED light pad in the long term. In our Diamond Painting accessories store, for example, they are available both as a super handy LED light pad in A4 format and as a larger and more comfortable LED light pad in A3 format.

Tip 9: The use of multiple attachments

With the tip of your Diamond Painting pen, which is included in all Carat Art Diamond Painting sets, you can pick up one stone at a time and place it on the canvas. However, this is often very laborious and slow for motifs with larger areas of one color. To speed up the process considerably, we have therefore included two so-called multiple attachments in each of our sets. These special multi-diamond tools can be used to pick up and set several stones at the same time. Depending on the attachment, different quantities of stones can be picked up. In our Premium Toolkit, which is included with every set, we have always included a 7-piece attachment and a 4-piece attachment. With these Diamond Painting attachments, you are significantly faster and, if used correctly, also more accurate. They are very easy to use and are therefore also suitable for diamond painting beginners. You attach them to the end of the pen and, as with the normal tip, simply take up a small amount of wax before you start working by sticking the attachment into the wax.

We hope these 9 tips and tricks have given you a few ideas that you didn't already know. It's often only the little things that make a big difference and can help to make Diamond Painting even more fun and enjoyable. If you would like to read more tips and tricks about Diamond Painting, we recommend our second blog post on this topic: "Even more Diamond Painting tips and tricks".