Diamond Painting is a newer craft that is similar to a paint-by-numbers type of activity without the paint. The finished piece also reminds me a bit of a cross-stitched piece, but instead of using embroidery thread, like DMC floss, the image comes together by placing faceted resin diamonds to a sticky canvas with a design imprinted upon it.

While attending a craft group meet up, I was pleased to see that one of the group members was working away on a large piece that was colorful and had a gorgeous shimmering finish. I could not stop asking questions about this clever activity. She was working on a cheeky cow design where the cow had a brilliant mask of flowers and there were so many colors to work with that I was immediately inspired to get my hands on a kit and try diamond painting for myself. There was only one downside to this activity...I had no idea what to do with the finished design!

My home is full of antique furniture and art. These diamond paintings, although beautiful when they are completed and framed, are just to modern for my home. I wanted to find a scaled down option so I logged on to my Amazon account and starting searching.

There are some small card designs on Amazon and probably on other places on the web, but the selections were limited to holiday greeting cards. Diamond painting tools were plentiful as well, but the "diamond drills" or faceted resin diamonds were a bit harder to find. Fortunately, I did find two options that worked; one for square diamonds and one for round diamonds. Once I managed to find the materials that I needed (the "diamonds", the tool kit and the way to make my cards sticky) I was ready to create my own DIY Diamond Painting Greeting Cards. 

 

Now I needed some designs, so I got to work. First I designed a beautiful Vintage Rose so I could created Mother's Day cards for my mom and my mother-in-law. Next I created a cute Narwhal design, then a simple Geometric design. These are all for sale in the shop. Just click here to see the whole collection.

 

The Cricut Maker is the latest digital cutting machine made by Provo Craft. It is able to cut paper, vinyl, cardstock, chipboard, bass wood, balsa wood, leather, fabric, felt and iron-on transfers...and I'm sure there is more! This is an elegant machine that is perfect for the home crafter and solid enough to make industrial quality cuts. At Craft Curiosity I have a number of tutorials coming for wonderful products to create and enjoy.

I have been a big fan of the Cricut cutting machines for a long time and I have spent a fair amount of time creating my own SVG files to use for greeting cards, box cards and most recently I created perpetual calendars which I will share here on the website. It's really great if you can design your own patterns, but the beauty is that you do not have to do that to enjoy the machine. The Cricut Design Space is full of amazing patterns, cuts, prints and now even sewing projects that are so easy to accomplish that you will not need advanced design skills to create beautiful projects. I highly recommend subscribing to Cricut Access where you have the choice of having the fonts only, standard access and premium access. If you can do an annual subscription you will save quite a bit, but you can choose fonts only or standard for a nominal monthly fee.

Unboxing the Cricut Maker is just the beginning of a world of new projects, tutorials and creative ideas that will be made available to you from Craft Curiosity. I will do my best to give you solid tutorials and share everything I know and as always your comments, suggestions and questions will be answered to the best of my ability. I'm so happy we can take this journey together!

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