While I’ve previously mentioned growing up with plenty of free time spent doing arts and crafts, it’s mostly been faithful standbys.
I’m talking things like watercolor painting, making perler bead lizard keychains, popsicle stick picture frames and anything you could conceivably do during a summer camp session.
Mom encouraged all of us to find hobbies and ways to express ourselves in artistic ways.
My sister and I have maintained such pursuits into adulthood and I’m still not sure if my brother’s computer building or other mechanically inclined hobbies count as artistic.
But, he recently branched out to laser engraving and 3D printing, so I’m at least counting those!
I’ve been content to keep my artistic preferences in less expensive avenues like making jewelry, collage portraits of varying subjects and customizing seasonal decorations.
Last month, I decided to try something new that I’ve been carefully researching – diamond art painting.
I think the best way I could describe diamond art painting, if you haven’t seen it yet, is that it’s basically a combination of cross-stitch, mosaics, and paint-by-numbers.
You purchase an adhesive canvas image kit that is divided into specific color designations that correspond with plastic resin “diamonds” that you apply to complete the picture.
All of the diamonds are pre-sorted and measured to make sure you can complete the kit and allow for some overage in case you lose any through the process.
Now, the hobby itself is relatively young and apparently originated abroad in the early 2000s.
I’ve spent a few years since the COVID Pandemic researching the best kits and trying to finally decide on one for myself that wouldn’t end up languishing or gathering dust while I tried to find the free time needed to finish it.
I have to tell you that a lot of those kits are too big to keep my attention and I struggled to settle on an image that I liked.
Well, enter Michael’s craft store and its seasonal Halloween kits that featured and assortment of sizes and unique image options.
I settled on a nighttime scene that features glow-in-the-dark diamonds and is roughly the size of a trivet.
The larger image options were terrifyingly daunting and didn’t have the nifty glowing aspect that I hoped would provide more novel inspiration than not.
Now, my excitement did wane whenever I opened the box and so many little packets of plastic gems covered the placemat I was working on.
Apparently, the diamonds are not to scale with the images on the box and I’m not sure I have the patience to do more than a few small sections or one color at a time before I’ve got to do something more engaging.
Honestly, it’s been almost a full month and I’m maybe one-third of the way done, so, I’m pretty sure this is the only diamond art painting I will complete, but at least I’ll know for sure if the desire to try something new will be sated.
Still, my mom didn’t raise me to be a quitter so I’m going to finish what I’ve started – plus, I don’t need any of the cats to steal my gems from my workspace either.
