Tuesday Reviews-Day: 5D Diamond Painting Kit

Tuesday Revews-Day

This is a sponsored post: I was provided with product for the purpose of review. Included links are affiliate links.

Have you seen the kits that are like a mash-up of paint by number and cross stitch? They’re called Diamond Painting and you create the picture by applying small resin “diamonds” onto a printed, pre-adhesive canvas. And it’s pretty doggone cool!

NewFrog supplied me with some kits to try out and I had a blast making this pretty puppy picture. A relaxing blast, if there can be such a thing. There is in my world, at least.

I hadn’t heard of NewFrog before they reached out to me, but they carry all sorts of products at very attractive prices. For the 5D Diamond Painting category they have over 6,000 kits to choose from. And I’ve poked around their other arts and crafts offerings and I like a lot of what I see!

There are a lot of pros to a product like this:

  • Incredibly fun and relaxing
  • Near-instant gratification
  • Lots of choices
  • Everything you need in one kit
  • Excellent for home/dorm decor
  • Minimal packaging (perfect for stocking stuffers)

And not many cons. At least not ones that can’t be worked around. The first thing you need to know is that products ship from China, so you’ll need to allow enough time for them to arrive. I think my packages took 10 days or so from the time the tracking information was emailed to me until they arrived in my mailbox.

About the kits, themselves, the only tiny criticism I have is that the bags of resin diamonds aren’t resealable. That was fixed by a piece of tape, but that’s how hard I had to work to come up with a downside to the kits themselves.

Head over to my YouTube channel to see the video of the kit in action!

Scrap With Me: CSI Case File #231

In The Studio

http://csichallenge.blogspot.com/

Imagine teamed up with CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration to solve their June 1st Case File. I used to participate with CSI as a digiscrapper, but it’s been a few years since I was last on that site. And now, as part of the Imagine team, I needed to drag out my old school supplies to go back to basics for a traditional scrapbook layout!

Case #231 is super hero-themed, and it just so happens that the 2017 Rose Parade was also super hero-themed, and we had Duncan with us, so I had perfect pictures for this assignment.

The fun twist to the CSI challenges is that it’s more than merely a sketch and/or color scheme (though that’s part of it). To solve the case you have to use at least three pieces of “evidence” (that would be elements or supplies) and give appropriate “testimony” (aka journaling, and they give you prompts to choose from).

As per my usual these days, I ran video for this layout (considering how long it’s been since I’ve done a physical scrapbook page, this is right up there with historical documents!). Take a gander to see how I planned out the page and put the various pieces together.

The supplies in my CSI kit were:
Imagine Supplies:

Other Supplies:

  • Paper: khaki, red, white, yellow chevron (DCWV)
  • Stamps: Geek is Chic (My Favorite Things), Woofers & Tweeters (Paper Smooches), Make a Wish (Studio Calico), Speech Bubble (unknown), Clickable Typewriter Alphabet (Contact USA, I think…), Foam Stamps (Making Memories)
  • Paint Brush
  • White Gelly Roll Pen (Sakura)
  • Embellishments: Star brads (unknown), Epoxy brads & Camera clip (Paper Studio), Metal letter brads (JoAnn Scrap Essentials), Ribbon and Twine (Dollar Tree?), Wooden starburst (Michaels?)
    Adhesives: Create a Sticker 150 (Xyron), Tape runner (Home & Hobby)
  • Cutters: Scissors & Paper Trimmer (Fiskars), Craft Knife (Xacto)
  • Upholstery Needle
  • Adhesive Pick-Up Block
  • Acrylic Block
  • Bone Folder

Faux Finish: Stained Glass Window Effect

In The Studio

I do love my faux finishes, although I cannot take full credit for this one. I first saw this effect on the My Froggy Stuff YouTube channel where she used washable markers and Mod Podge to do this same thing.

Mod Podge never seems to fully dry in the South Georgia/North Florida humidity, so I wanted to find another way to get this same result using Imagine products.

Memento markers were the obvious choice, but it took a few trials to find out whether Creative Medium (on its own or with another product added) would work for the adhesive. It had a bit too much tooth on it’s own or even diluted a bit, but when I tried On Point Glue, it worked like a charm!

To get the wavy, pebbly look of old leaded glass I needed to heat the glue to set it before it could settle. Leaving it to dry on its own would be a great way to create a streaky marbled look (which would be great laminated onto a white background).

Check out the video of creating this look over on the Imagine blog.

M is for Monogram

In The Studio

Our first May challenge was the letter M, and I picked monogram. Monograms are big business here in the south–they’re on everything, it seems–and I though it would be fun to create something with my monogram that was both functional and decorative.

Make sure to check out the post (and video!) over on the Imagine blog.

The Vertigo pretty much makes this project–it adds such a cool effect to the background. I will say, though, that cutting the Vertigo, staying on the line I’d drawn, that did make a little dizzy in the moment. But, hey, it’s a small price to pay for a fun little keychain.

That said, if you’re not sure this would hold up to regular use, I think the project could be made with fabric in place of the cardstock and felt in place of the foam. Then pierce and blanket-stitch around the edges to keep everything together? That could totally work. Or even some thin (glove-weight) leather or pleather.

And because I was incredibly neglectful in sharing my projects over the last few months, here’s a handy recap of the March and April goodies from Imagine.

In the earlier days of scrapbooking, paper piecing (handcut or with the aid of punches) was a common decorative element. I have a hunch that it found it’s way to paper crafting from quilting–paper piecing is a technique for more intricate quilt designs–so I reversed it with this llama paper piecing based on a quilting pattern. I still have no idea what all I’m going to do with it, but it was loads of fun to make!

Our color challenge for April was Lapis and you know that made me happy. I adore my small collection of lapis jewelry and decided to use one of the pieces–a bracelet I purchased in Mexico–as the inspiration for this card anytime card.

I finally got another art journal page put together, this one for the theme of “the bigger the better.” There’s a video of the process over on the Imagine blog.

From big to small, the next project stands about 5″ tall and it my most ambitious quilling project to date. The patterned paper gave the coils and interesting look and it was a lot of fun figuring out how I wanted to pair the different pieces together to make the flowers.

What does this embroidery project have to do with Imagine products? First I stamped the rose image onto the linen with VersaFine ink, then I dyed my own embroidery floss using Fireworks! Spray to create variegated green and pink thread that I used to embroider the stamped image. Just another way to use the supplies we already own but in a different context!

My last project to share has something in common with the first: Vertigo. I hadn’t used this material before this year and now I get to play with ways to incorporate it into different uses. For this one, the swirly nature of the Vertigo plus the leaves stamped on top kind of give it a “floating on water” look that I didn’t want to cover up. So all I added was a bit of patterned paper and a hand-written greeting to finish it out. Sometimes simple is best, you know?

A Project You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

In The Studio

 

There are few things in this life that squick me out more than tooth issues, but even my dental demons didn’t stop me from creating these cute tooth fairy pillows for the Helmar blog.

Just the right size to slip under a pillow

Just the right size to slip under a pillow

Growing up, I had one of those interactive board books called Bruce’s Loose Tooth, about a moose named (you guessed it) Bruce, who had a tooth that just wouldn’t come out, despite how loose it was. So there was a string running through all of the pages showing all the different ways he and his friends tried to rid him of the tooth. The most memorable involving a moving train, I seem to recall.

At any rate, like most kids in the US (a safe generalization, right?) when a tooth came loose it was placed under a pillow and magically replaced my money in the morning. Silver dollars were the big money prize, back then, but I know I’ve heard of modern day tooth fairies bringing 5 or 10 dollar bills.

Inflation is everywhere!

While it might have been cute to make one of these for Duncan’s puppy teeth, I think we’re past that stage (not to mention he’d just destuff it), it’s a cute and simple project for those with little ones of the tooth-losing ages. It uses a fray-blocking medium as well as a basting spray that would come in handy in any number of projects, so go check it out!