DIY Diamond Painting | Make Your Own Simple Adhesive Canvas

by FernMakes

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Intro: DIY Diamond Painting | Make Your Own Simple Adhesive Canvas

A while ago I bought a diamond painting kit and made a start...but after a little while I decided I didn't much like the image I'd chosen and set it aside. Fast forward to now and I decided I wanted to make my own art and use up as many of the little plastic gems from the kit as possible.

I wanted something modern, and so for simplicity's sake I chose to do an abstract geometric pattern. I therefore used a pattern as the basic guide and decided which gem colour I would use for each section.

If you haven't done this craft before, I highly recommend it if you want a relaxing and satisfying activity.

I hope you enjoy this Instructable!

STEP 1: First Steps

The first thing you need to do is calculate how large you want your artwork to be, and also know how big the drils are that you'll be using.

I wanted my art to be just slightly smaller than the opening in my mat board frame, and this size was 22 x 17 cm.

The drils I'm using are 2.8 mm across.

You then need to divide the artwork size by the size of the drils, to find out how many drils will fit along the width and height of your 'canvas'.

So 22 cm divided by 0.28 (cm) is 79, and 17 cm divided by 0.28 is 61.

So my artwork will be 79 x 61 drils (so 4819 drils altogether).

STEP 2: Set Up the Canvas

I'm going to be showing how to do this on Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements), but I'm sure there will be similar options in other software too.

In the previous step, I worked out that I wanted my art to be 79 drils wide and 61 drils high. I therefore need to open a new custom document that is 79 pixels wide and 61 pixels high.

To work out the resolution (in pixels/cm since I'm working with cm), I divided the width in pixels by the width in cm.

This is 79 divided by 22, which equals 3.59. I rounded up to 3.6

I then coloured the entire canvas in a light colour so I could see the 'grid' that outlines the pixels.

I then made a new layer with a little sample of each colour of dril I had available in a column on the right. I just approximated the colours by eye. This gave me a palette to make my design from.

STEP 3: Find & Resize the Image

As I mentioned above, I found a geometric pattern on 'Unsplash' to use as my guide, but you could make your own from scratch if you prefer.

You will need to open this image in your software and resize it so that it's at least as big as the size of your artwork canvas. Also use the same resolution setting as before (in my case 3.6 pixels/cm).

Rotate the image if necessary. Then copy and paste this image into your canvas document so that it is in a layer below the palette.

STEP 4: Create Your Design

In a new layer above your guide image, use the pencil tool (set to 1 px in size) to draw your design.

I used the eyedropper tool to select the colour I wanted from my palette, and then just drew the shapes freehand, using the image below as my guide.

Mostly I just used solid blocks of colour, but I also put speckles of other colours in a couple of blocks for interest. Obviously you can make your design as complex as you wish!

I didn't count how many drils I had available to make sure I had enough - I figured I'd just amend the pattern as I go - but you can be a bit more exacting if you wish :)

STEP 5: Print the Design

To make sure that the outline around each pixel remained, I made sure that the image was at 100% on the screen and took a screenshot (Alt + PrtScr).

I copy and pasted this screenshot into a new document and printed it out, making sure it was at the correct physical size (22 x 17 cm).

STEP 6: Assemble the Canvas

Cut out a piece of contact paper that is at least 2 cm wider and longer than the opening of your frame. Then peel off the protective backing and stick the contact paper to the back of the mat board. Try and have the film as taut over the opening as possible so there aren't wrinkles in it.

Keep the protective backing nearby so you can cover the contact paper over again to protect it from dust as you're working on it.

Then use masking tape to attach the printed-out pattern to the back of the board also. Trim this paper down if necessary so that it is a little smaller than the frame.

This will give you a frame with sticky film within the opening, as shown in the photos.

STEP 7: Add the Drils

In a diamond painting kit you usually receive a tool, a piece of wax, and a tray. To use the tool, you push the end into the wax and this makes the end of the tool just sticky enough to lightly stick to a dril. I personally prefer a bit of blu-tack on mine but that's personal preference :)

All you then do is put some drils in the tray and carefully shake from side-to-side to try and get a fair number of them with the flat side facing down, then tap the end of the tool onto the curved top of a dril and transfer it onto the contact paper canvas.

Notes: Try and keep your fingers, dust, hair and anything else off the contact paper to maintain the stickiness. It's best practice to cover the area you are not working on with plastic sheet that can peel off again easily. Also, try and get the drils in the centre of each square pixel to make it easier to place all of the drils in the space. You can use tweezers to move the drils if you need to.

STEP 8: Block by Block

You'll see here that I ran out of yellow and green before completing a block, so I tried to finish with neat lines and then chose other colours to fill in the gap. Also, on the stripes I ran out of black and white so filled in with various shades of blue.

STEP 9: Design Complete!

As you can see, the colours are a bit different in some places but the overall pattern is almost the same. It was a fun process and I'm very pleased with the result - I think it looks bright and modern, just what I wanted!

STEP 10: Adding the Gloss Glaze

For the last step, I brushed on a fairly thick layer of Triple thick gloss glaze and left it to dry. Try to be gentle doing this so that you don't knock any drils out of place.

This is a good idea to do because it really helps the drils stick more securely and form into a single connected layer...and using a gloss finish ensures that the drils remain nice and shiny :D

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

12 Comments

Gumage19 9 months ago

I found this program, took a bit to work it out but found it really good in the end, just set the color palette to DMC and diamond size to 2.8mm and it will convert the image to the color of your diamonds. the software is not free but at $22NZD is very affordable. :)

Eilonwe 1 year ago

I just started my first diamond painting, and I can already see myself recycling my counted crosstitch patterns into diamond paintings! Counted crosstitch will give you a coded colored grid like you have with diamond paintings, you would just need to find a way to transfer an adhesive to the copy of the pattern, or be careful how you count (just as you would with counted crosstitch).

Brittdub 1 year ago

Ohh man contact paper! Cool idea probably works way better then my attempts at it with double sided tape...
Now i need to figure out the pixels part of it... my last attempt was a mini loki and i failed my math XD

FernMakes 1 year ago

:D Aw I hope it works excellently next time!

TeresaV30 1 year ago

I've had so many people tell me how relaxing it is to do those diamond painting kits. I'm an art major so I'm anxious to try my own design. Thanks so much for sharing this idea.

FernMakes 1 year ago

You're welcome, I hope you enjoy it!

ChristopherN2 1 year ago

Me and my wife do diamond paintings. This is less than half of what we have done. This is an awesome instructible and I do graphic design so I know Photoshop as well. Totally going to try this!

FernMakes 1 year ago

Oh wow! I particularly like the nearest Bowie one, those must have taken you a while to create. Thanks for sharing and I'm glad you like my Instructable!

ChristopherN2 1 year ago

Thanks! She found it on Amazon and I think it took her like roughly a week off and on. We get most of them off Amazon when they're on sale haha.

FernMakes 1 year ago

Ha yes, you can get kits pretty cheaply if you know where/when to look :)