Leisure Arts Diamond Art Kit

Product Review and Giveaway!

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Leisure Arts gave me one of their new Diamond Art Kits for free, to try out and review. I hadn’t tried diamond art before, but I was excited to give it a go.

I recorded the whole project in a time-lapse video, so you can watch it come together. Leisure Arts is also offering a similar kit as a giveaway prize! See the video and the giveaway details below.

What is Diamond Art?

Diamond Art is a relatively new craft that has really taken off! It’s like painting by numbers, but with sparkly “diamonds” instead. They’re not real diamonds of course, but rather multi-faceted resin gems. The Leisure Arts kits are made by Diamond Dotz, and they use 13-faceted, round gems.

How does it work?

Basically, you use a stylus to pick up gems and place them on a sticky chart that’s printed onto a piece of fabric.

The chart:

It starts with a high quality fabric that has a charted design printed on it, much like a printed cross stitch pattern. The placement for each gem is marked with a color and a symbol.

On top of the fabric, there is a layer of adhesive wherever the gems should be, and the whole thing is covered with a protective plastic sheet. Because this came rolled up, I taped it down to my table at the corners so that it would lay flat.

The gems:

The gems come pre-sorted by color, and each color is also marked with a number. The chart has a key showing which number matches up to which symbol on the chart.

Each gem has a flat bottom, and a faceted top. They are very tiny, but I didn’t find it too hard to distinguish top from bottom. Good lighting does help! The kit includes a small tray with grooves in it. Tapping the tray gently helps to line up the gems into the grooves, so they are easier to pick up.

There were also some handy plastic bags for storing the leftover gems! I cut out the numbers from the original packaging, and put those in the bags along with the gems.

The stylus

The soft stylus grip made it comfortable to hold through the entire project. The tip of the stylus has a faceted opening, similar to the shape of the gems. The faceted tops of the gems fit deeper into the stylus than the smooth bottoms do. This makes it easier to pick them up the right way!

The kit also comes with a small square of wax. Pressing the tip of the stylus into this fills the opening with wax. The wax sticks lightly to the gems – strongly enough to pick them up, but weakly enough to let go once the gem is stuck to the fabric.

After every 20-30 gems, I pressed my stylus into the wax again to freshen it. I tried to be conservative with it, because I thought there wouldn’t be enough. As it turns out, there was way more than enough, so go ahead and be more generous!

Other Tips

The protective film helps to keep the chart sticky, so you shouldn’t remove it all at once. As you progress through the image, just peel back the part you are working on.

I wanted to keep the colors separate, so I did one color at a time. This meant a lot of back and forth. If I had more trays, I might have done several colors at once, completing one area before moving on to the next. I guess I’ll have to build my collection of trays by making more kits!

I also found it helpful to work from the bottom up and the outside in, to avoid touching unfinished areas while I worked. For the same reason, I preferred filling in the larger areas first, and then doing the outlines.

How long did it take?

This project was very relaxing and meditative for me. It’s a beginner kit, and the chart area measures approximately 8.7 inches square.

Because I was recording it, I tried to do it all in one day. I was also working around a camera tripod. You can see it’s “feet” in the picture above. I almost did it, but I lost the good natural light before I could finish. So I had to wrap it up the next morning.

In all, it took me about 10-12 hours of work, with a few breaks in between. It gave me lots of time to think, enjoy some music, and just relax and have fun.

I can’t often spend a whole day on a project like that, but I also don’t think I would have wanted to put it all way and take it out again several times. If I wasn’t finishing it all in one session, I would have liked to have it all on a tray that I could just pick up and put aside when needed.

Time-Lapse Video

Watch the whole project from start to finish in this time-lapse video!

Watch this video on YouTube

The finished project

I don’t know what I’m going to do with my lovely diamond art. One option is to frame it, or I could cut it out and attach it to something. I think I’m going to just hold onto it for a little while, until the right opportunity presents itself.

To store it, I rolled it back up with the diamonds on the inside. Then I wrapped the instruction sheet around it and taped that shut. I wouldn’t store it like that forever, but for a couple of months it should be just fine.

I threw away the leftover wax, and stored the leftover gems and stylus in one small bag. Before storing the stylus, I used a toothpick to remove the wax from the tip. I might try using the leftovers with some glue for a freeform project sometime.

Beginner Kit Giveaway!

Leisure Arts is generously providing a similar Diamond Art Kit for a giveaway prize! The winner can pick from one of the available beginner kit designs. Which design do you like best? I can’t decide between the elephant and the llama…but that blue dahlia is lovely too. I’m hopeless, I know.

Enter to win

To be eligible, you must be 18 years of age or older, with a valid, US shipping address. The winner will be contacted by email, and must reply to that email and provide their selections and shipping address within 1 week in order to receive the prize. If the winner does not reply within 1 week, a new winner will be selected. The giveaway ends on March 31st, 2019 at 11:59pm, central time. Hurry and enter below!

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