10 Diamond Painting Tips I Wish I Knew Before Starting

Here are 10 things I wish I'd known before I started diamond painting. Some are practical, some are about mindset, but all of them would have saved me time, money, or frustration.

• Diamond painting kit (any brand)
• Steel tip pen (optional, but a game changer)
• Glue dots and museum putty (not the pink wax)
• A project you actually love

I spent way too long fighting with those tiny pink pens and the pink wax. I'm a heavy placer — I press hard when I set a drill. The brass tips on the standard pens would bend out of shape on me. I didn't realize that wasn't normal until I found steel tips on Etsy.

The first steel tips were just barrels you could swap into your existing pens. Now they make all-in-one steel tips for single placers and metal multi-placers too. I will never go back. Every pen I own has a steel tip on one end and a multi-placer or straightener on the other.

Another thing that drove me crazy: with hollow brass tips, the wax would get pushed up inside the pen. Steel tips don't have that problem.

I was refilling my pen every four drills with that pink wax. It was frustrating. I tried the Pretty Placers putty, but I'm too heavy-handed for them.

What works for me: glue dots in my single placer. You can buy them at any craft store. They give you that satisfying pop when you place a drill. My husband actually asked me to record the sound because he finds it so soothing.

For my multi-placer, I use museum putty. Just pull off a little piece, roll it into a snake, and load it in. It lasts way longer than wax. Blue Tac works too, but I prefer museum putty.

I keep pink wax around for emergencies, but I rarely touch it.

Diamond paintings are pixels. If you want a detailed image to look good, you need more pixels — which means a bigger canvas.

My first kits were 30x30 cm partial drills. They were fine for simple mandalas. But when I bought a 40x50 cm Marvel kit for my nephew, it looked pixelated and disappointing.

Here's the rule: simple images with big color blocks (think coloring book style) look fine at smaller sizes. Detailed images with shading, gradients, and lots of shapes need to be bigger to look good. I did a comparison video with a Jasmine Becket-Griffith image — a small 30x40 versus a large Diamond Art Club version. The difference was dramatic.

I joke that instead of looking at prices, I should convert kit sizes into hours in my head. That would help curb my impulse buying.

Square kits take longer than round kits because the drills are smaller. Kits with lots of confetti (many different colors in a small area) take longer than kits with big color blocks. Even if two kits have the same number of drills, the confetti-heavy one will take much longer because you're constantly switching colors and placing single drills instead of multi-placing.

This is why so many people end up with huge stashes. You buy a kit thinking "I'll get to it soon," but soon never comes because you underestimated the time commitment.

Diamond painting companies are great at marketing. They make you feel like if you don't buy it now, it's gone forever.

That's not always true. Companies restock kits. I wanted Flower Crazy when it first came out, but I waited. It sold out. A year later, it was back in stock and I got it. No big deal.

Also, artists sometimes move between companies. An image you thought you could only get from one brand might pop up somewhere else.

If you really want a discontinued kit, you can hit the resale market. But be careful — there are scammers out there. And I'm not paying double or triple the original price. That's just me. You do you.

This goes hand in hand with FOMO. If you buy kits you only kind of like, those are the ones that sit in your stash forever.

These days I'm much pickier. I check new releases, but I rarely buy. Once a month, I go through my wishlist and ask myself: "Do I still really love this? Or was it a FOMO moment?" About 90% of the time, it's the latter.

If you're honest with yourself, you'll probably find you can cut your stash in half. I know I could.

I tried to ease into diamond painting with small kits from Amazon. But within a year, I had spent an eye-watering amount of money.

Premium kits are worth the money for the experience — better canvas, better drills, better results. But it's not just the kits. Once you're in, you want custom pens, steel tips, pretty trays, multi-placers, cover minders, release papers... the list goes on.

Sign up for rewards programs at every company. Use referral codes. Watch for holiday sales. Every little bit helps.

I debated whether to include this, but it's a huge issue in the community.

AI art can't be copyrighted (at least for now). But it's getting harder and harder to tell what's AI and what's an actual artist's work. Image searches are overwhelmed. So if you see an image you like, it's nearly impossible to know if it's a legitimate licensed piece or something generated by AI.

Just be aware that this is a hot button issue. People have strong opinions on both sides.

During lockdown, I was isolated. If I had known about diamond painting events, I would have felt a lot less alone.

Events work like this: someone hosts a themed event, you pick a kit that fits the theme, and you work on it during the event period (usually a month). At the end, there's often a prize drawing.

Events are great for meeting other crafters, winning cool prizes (custom pens, trays, kits, cover minders), and giving yourself a reason to pull a kit out of your stash that you might have ignored otherwise.

This is the most important one.

Don't stress about how long something takes. Don't stress about perfect drill placement — nobody places drills perfectly unless they're using a ruler. When you step back from your painting, you won't see those slightly crooked drills.

Do what works for you. Like rounds? Do rounds. Like squares? Do squares. Like single placing? Single place. Want to use the pink pen? Use it. Want to spend money on custom trays? Do it.

This is your hobby. Your time to relax. Don't let anyone make you feel bad about how you do it.

Do images that bring you joy. That's what it's all about.