Some paintings only come in the one size – this particularly applies to the sparkly drill kits. But with most full drill kits, our factory is able to make them larger for you.

We can print kits right up to 75×120 size. If the painting is very detailed bigger is always going to be the best option. If you are not sure what size kit to order talk to us and we’ll figure it out together.

Some people use the IKEA bag sealing clips to reseal the original bags the dots come in while they are working on a kit – we usually have some of these spare in the studio if you need them.

Some folks “kit up” their kit which is put all the dots into containers with either the number or the symbol or both all ready to go. I like to use the containers from the 56 compartment container as they are divided into lots of 4 so they are easy to take with me to markets etc.

This is another to each their own question. 🙂 Some people prefer to start in the top corner and work their way across or down and they will change colours regularly to do sections. Also if you are doing a very large kit like our Geisha kit it will be easier to work in sections.

Others prefer to pick one colour and apply that one colour to the entire kit, then work on the next colour. If you are going to work this way make sure to keep track of your leftover dots because usually when you get to the end of the kit you will find you missed some dots and have to go back and fill them in.

We have a special spotter in our studio named Sarah who can look at any kit – sparkly or full drill – and see any dots you have missed when you think you have finished. She always finds at least one!

You can give the tray a shake from side to side to make them line up better in the tray. I do find this slightly easier with the tray holder as the g-forces seem to work better for me with it.

If you got the kit from us let us know and we will get you more dots. Usually I have plenty of spares here. If it is a DMC code and we are out of stock of that number it may take some time for us to get them shipped over.

The more important question is how did the canvas become not sticky in the first place. There is only one thing that should ever touch the glue on your canvas and that is the diamond dot you are sticking to it. If you touch the glue with your hands oil from your hands will make the glue less sticky. It is important to never touch the canvas.

Should the canvas become less sticky you can try using baby wipes to clean it, sometimes this will solve the problem.

Having said that there are occasions where the kit has been sitting in the factory for a while and the glue becomes less sticky. If that ever happens to one of our canvas return it to us and we will swap it for a new one if we have it in stock or give you a store credit if we do not have it.

We can fix it here in house – and you can fix it on a kit you did not get from us – by using the Selleys Kwik Grip spray but this is not something we would want to give to a customer once we’ve fixed it as it does become harder to work with the canvas afterwards. Those kits tend to become display kits for us.

Baby wipes are a magical tool for diamond painters – having seen what they can do there is no way I would let them near the delicate parts of my baby if I had one lol! 😉 You can use them to wipe the canvas clean – if you get paper stuck to your canvas it will remove that, too.

Baby wipes are a magical tool for diamond painters. If you get paper stuck to your canvas it will remove it. The glue may feel not sticky for a short time, but the sticky will return.

We created a tray holder to place your tray into which protects it from tipping. You can find them under Tray Holders.

How to straighten beads up when rows go on crooked .

You can get a correction tool – we have two versions – one we print ourselves in the mancave.

You should only ever expose the area of the kit you are working on. Some kits will have cellophane plastic, others will have wax backed paper.

YES there is – if you put the cellophane the wrong side up you will absolutely know about it when you try to take it back off again. To prevent this happening we stick our price label onto the cellophane so you can know which is the right way up.

If you put the paper up the wrong way it will stick to the glue and you will need to use a baby wipe to clean it off.

Unfortunately there is no good answer to this question. The glue is sticky and anything in the area that might attach to it probably will attach to it. Fibres, pet hair, I have even had small flying bugs land in my glue on a hot summer night and there is no way to remove them and keep them alive sadly – it is like a glue trap for them.

The best thing you can do is keep as much of the kit covered other than the area you are working on. On the edges of a full drill kit you might like to use Washi tape to protect the glue edges there.

If you get hair, dust, fur, or flying creatures on an area you have not dotted yet you can use a baby wipe to remove it – the kit will lose stickiness for a short time after you do this but the sticky will return.

If you get hair in areas that you have dotted, a pair of tweezers might help you to remove the hairs.

There are a wide variety of uses for leftover beads and dots. Here are just a few –

• save your leftover dots in case you run out of them when doing another kit in the future
• use them to decorate your tray holder that you buy from us – you can use superglue or glue dots to stick them on easily
• order a custom name tag from us with your name on it, it comes with circles showing you where to put your dots and also double sided tape already applied to attach your dots to.
• use them in card making or other arts and crafts
• glue them to wooden things you can buy at Spotlight or Bunnings
• glue them to coasters

There are several options to find more time. You can build your own Delorean time machine, you can find a sparkly vampire to change you so that you don’t need to sleep anymore.. 🙂

This is going to differ for each person and how they like to work. Here is a basic list of things you might find useful to have on hand –

Tray holder – well we invented this and find it very useful in the studio but I recommend it because it is not until you spill your dots all over your uncovered canvas that you truly know the pain of making that mistake. And it can still happen with a tray holder – my cat knocked a tray holder off a studio table last week and I spent 20 minutes on the carpet picking up those dots. it was my fault, the tray holder was too close to the edge of the table.

Pen – everyone likes to use their own favourite pen. Some people collect pens. We do have a small range of pens available but that range by no means is even a tiny amount of all the kinds of pens available out there in the world!

Faulty drill pot – Here in the studio we use small bowls from IKEA to put faulty drills into. I like the IKEA KALAS bowls for this purpose – they are microwave safe, dishwasher safe, and very handy to have omn hand for all manner of things including to use as a faulty dot pot.

Rubbish Bowl – We also like to use the KALAS as a rubbish bowl but I prefer to keep the rubbish separate from the drills as much of the rubbish is plastic and can be recycled with your normal recycling.

Light – Light is important – it all comes down to what works best for you. Light boards are great to use under a kit – we do sometimes have them in stock. Lighting in the room is quite important too.

Straightening tool – some folks use an old credit card, we have two different designs of the correction tool in our store – one is printed in house by us, the other comes from the factory in China. You can use these in two ways – you can use it as a ruler while dotting where you hold it on the line and place your dots straight up against it, or you can use it to push the dots once you have placed them – sometimes depending on the kind of glue the ruler option is the most effective choice.

Tweezers – Always handy when you have to remove a dot but also very handy for the sparkly drill kits as some of those drills are harder to pick up with the pen.

Baby Wipes – essential for cleaning dust, dirt, hair etc from the glue and can also be used to remove paper from the canvas if you accidentally stick it to the glue.