Diamond Painting Kit Update

In early June, I attended my first Diamond Painting Club meeting. It's where I first learned about this interesting hobby - a way to create sparkly pictures with a kit. Diamond painting has been likened to paint-by-number, or counted cross stitch, both of which I've done in my lifetime. Heck, I even owned a counted cross-stitch shop, called The Stitchery Niche, back in the early 1980s, when we lived in Iowa. 

Anyway, diamond painting interests me, so after making my first little picture...

I ordered three kits. The first came from Diamond Painting Pro, and two came from an Etsy shop.

I quickly learned that not all diamond painting kits are created equal.

I happily plunged into a lovely ocean sunrise kit from Diamond Painting Pro, making great progress in about 20 hours of "painting." When I was about one-third down from the top, I noticed that the sun was pink.

Pink! Shouldn't that be yellow?

This is my photo of the diamond painting of the pink sun with one drill removed to check that I was using the color according to the key. I was. 

Close up of the sun.

Color 819 is definitely pink!

comparison photo of website picture, and my diamond painting

I contacted the company who promptly replied that they would send me (at no charge) yellow drills with which to correct the error. I only needed to tell them which colors I wanted. That's when I learned that drills are colored using the same system as DMC colors - just like the floss colors used to stitch counted cross stitch. 

However, not wanting to be the artist designing my own canvas, I asked for a corrected canvas instead. I was assured a new, replacement kit would be designed and sent to me. Three weeks later (that's how long a kit takes to come from China), I received my replacement kit - a new canvas and all 42 drills colors. There was NO YELLOW among them. The sun was still color-coded pink.

That's when I worked out that this company must use some type of digital program to assign colors to a picture. A real artist (person) would not have colored the sun this way. 

So, I again contacted the company, simply to say I was unhappy with the second kit. That's when they suggested they would send me a different kit of my choice, or give me a store credit. I appreciate that they really seemed to want to work out the problem. 

After looking at a friend's finished diamond painting of a sunset, and noting her sun colors, I decided to ask for seven colors/values of yellow drills, AND a store credit. They gave me both.

The drills I received are on the left.

The $56 ocean kit cost me $46.39 (I received a first-time buyer 20 percent discount).

I now have a $20 store credit. 

Diamond Painting Pro has been very fair about trying to correct their error.

Now I have to be the artist of my own painting, removing drills from the sun and replacing them with yellow ones, and I also must determine how to place the correct colors of yellow reflecting across the water. 

That's gonna take some thinking, and work.

Until I'm ready to tackle it I've been painting the palm tree silhouette/ocean sunset painting bought on Etsy. The colors are correct on this one. It's the square drills that aren't top-notch. Many of them are misshapen, or have untrimmed edges that make them impossible to use.

The piece of release paper in the photo is covering the next section I will begin painting. 

With this kit I've had several drills not stick to the pre-glued canvas, even after using a roller on the painted sections, to ensure drills are stuck into place. I Googled what to use to re-glue drills, and bought this Tombow scrapbooking glue at Hobby Lobby. It works! 

Experience is a good teacher, isn't it? You get what you pay for. 

When I've finished these kits, probably not until next year, if I ever want another one, I plan to order from Diamond Art Club. Their paintings are generated by people who are artists, and though their kits are more expensive than others, the quality of the canvas and drills are evidence of their of their worth. Linda