Tag: painting

Lake Forest Diamond painting by Make Market at Michaels is Finished

On By Michel McDonaldIn crafts, diamond paintingLeave a comment

I just finished making this Diamond painting called Lake Forest which is a Make Market diamond painting that I bought from Michael’s. This Diamond painting only took me 9 days to complete.

I mentioned this in a previous blog post that I was going to make this diamond painting in 9 days. I actually couldn’t work on it on Thursday, but my total time working on this diamond painting was in fact 9 days. I had 18 sheets of silicone release paper on the diamond painting, and I worked two release sheets a day until it was finished.

These Diamond paintings by Make Market are just so fantastic. I know I keep saying this, but it’s so true. This diamond painting looks like an actual picture or work of art from an actual artist. It doesn’t look as pixelated in the image above as it does when you look at it up close because you can see the pixelization which is basically every Diamond drill is a pixel. But when you are looking at it from a distance, I could barely tell that it’s a diamond painting.

I seriously do not know how they do these things. All of the make market Diamond paintings that I have done so far look like actual photographs. Even the 5×7 Diamond paintings that I made for summer that have the graphic of a rainbow umbrella, and the Adirondack chairs. They look so realistic. And then of course I also have the beach scene and the rainbow surfboards and they looks so real.

There’s so much detail in the palm trees and the shadowing of the palm trees on the sand in the beach chairs and then also in the surfboard diamond painting you can see like a little shack to the left and then of course you see all of the Palm leaves. And I mean, come on you have to look at that umbrella and think that it is taken from an actual picture. The Adirondack chairs do look a lot more fake and pixelated, but they still look great.

I am just so in love with Diamond painting and I’m just so fascinated by the whole thing and the whole process of making the diamond paintings and just the look of all of the graphics. This is probably by far, for me anyway, the best craft I have done in my life.

My next daytime project is the one that is the pink flamingo float in the pool and that one is halfway done, and I was going to do the bigger one that is called Wheat Field by Vincent Van Gogh in the bedroom, but I’m already starting to run out of space in my nine drawers with Diamond drills, and I have one drawer filled with diamonds for the one that’s called Starry Night with Tardis that I bought from Temu many months ago. I stopped working on it because it was causing me issues with the parchment paper being stuck to it. I have added the “Dotz Stick” Diamond painting glue to a small area of that one where the parchment paper took away the stickiness, so that should be good to go tomorrow night when I start working on it. This one I decided not to use the stainless steel grid that allows me to perfectly place all of the Diamond drills. I don’t think that the grid works for this Diamond painting. There are actually a couple where I won’t be able to use that grid because it’s too big for this diamond painting. So these ones that the grid doesn’t work with, I will just do it freehand.

So here you can see where I’m at in both of these Diamond paintings. I’ve been working on the flamingo float in the swimming pool for 3 days during the day in the living room, and even though you can only see the top half, look at how realistic it already is. You can clearly see the umbrella and it looks so realistic and then the cactus behind the wall. And then the Tardis with the starry night looks pretty good for being all freehand. And just like with the ones that I do at night, I will do two of the 4×6 silicone release sheets per night until it’s done. Then I’ll have an empty drawer that I can use for the Wheat Field, which I cannot wait to start on. It’s funny because Starry Night is Vincent Van Gogh and so is Wheat Field. The only difference is that the starry night one has the Tardis from Doctor Who. Can you imagine the Tardis being in the Wheat Field painting? I’m actually curious to know if they made a graphic that has a Tardis in the Wheat Field painting. I’ll have to research that, but not too much because I already have enough on my plate already as it is. Also, can you imagine what Vincent Van Gogh must think of all of these paintings with the Tardis in them?

Michael’s

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

I know the economy is bad and most businesses are suffering greatly because of it.  I’ve gotten a coupon just about every day for the last 2 weeks from Michael’s.  This is a company who I hardly ever get coupons from but maybe 4 times a year.  They are so hard up for business they are practically giving away their merchandise just to keep their stores in business.

I really do have some things that I want to buy but I just can’t afford it.  I want to buy the wood burning kit along with some plain wood boxes and trays and round pieces of wood and rectangle and I would like the grease pencils that you use to color the wood when wood burning.

Wanting however and needing are 2 different things.  I can’t afford so I don’t need.  I want sure but do I need?  No.  I want them so I can learn how to do it so hopefully I can sell some stuff and make some extra money for the household but can I afford to find out if it’s my thing, if it’s not going to turn out to be another craft fad that I won’t be able to figure out and it will sit in the corner?  No.  I can’t afford to take that risk right now.

I think 6 months ago we were there so Darrin could buy some painting stuff and while we were there I bought some drawing stuff that was on clearance but I knew I wouldn’t get that into it so I didn’t buy much.  Needless to say I didn’t get much into it.  But I can see me using that as a tool to sketch out ideas for wood burning.  So who knows, I might not have wasted money on that stuff.  But for now, I did waste money on it because it sits in a drawer.

Sorry Michael’s, your name is my name but that just isn’t enough for me to be able to spend money to keep you afloat.  I really do wish this economy wasn’t in the toilet though because if it wasn’t believe me, I’d be there in a hot second buying stuff.

Oh, with this economy people aren’t going to buy art so buying wood burning stuff to make money isn’t going to work.  People are burning through their savings account to keep from becoming homeless, I highly doubt they are going to buy a wood slab with a picture of a horse or a dog on it.  And the people who still have their jobs are probably having to save all that they can just in case they lose their job.  Or their spouse is out of work so they are scraping by to make up for the loss of their wife or husband.

Beverly Hills

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Well Darrin had a design job today and so we drove to Beverly Hills (I was the navigator with my GPS on my laptop).

I was sitting in the car with Flower while he was doing his job by looking at the rooms that he is going to be designing. I didn’t want to take the focus away from him by being there especially with Flower and I heard a dog barking so I figured staying in the car was the best course of action. I was wrong.

This woman whose house we were parked in front of was getting paranoid. Well, who could blame her, its million dollar mansions in Beverly Hills. She called AAA because I guess 1 of her cars wasn’t starting and she came up to the car and I rolled down the window and she was all “how long are you going to be here?” and I said that the person I’m here with is a designer and he’s across the street and I was asked to stay in the car.

She walked away but I was so uncomfortable being in the car so I just came up to the house and rang the doorbell and they let me in. I sat on the couch while Darrin was telling them what he was going to do blah blah blah. Of course the focus was then on me and Flower lol.

Anyway, it’s good he has a design job. No painting WOOT! Hehe.

Update: They decided not to do it with Darrin after all and we wasted $60 on gas to get down there for nothing.  Darrin asked to be compensated for the gas and his time but they refused.