The Ultimate Diamond Art FAQ with Links
(A continuing series of excerpts from my Amazon Kindle Book)
Previous Question Answered: Alignment Techniques
Next Question to be Answered: Drill Storage After Kitting Down
You have probably noticed by now, after clicking some of the links in this book, that there are some odd little tools that are about the size of your thumb that tend to be included with many of the tools as a bonus. These are called multi-placers, and they magically fit in the other end of your pink pen, and in other pens as well, though you may need to wrap washi tape around the tool connector to get it to fit into the hole. Sometimes they screw into proprietary pen sets. And like the name implies, they can help you place more than one drill at a time, and theoretically they save time, but only after you’ve gotten the hang of using them. Initially they can be timewasters. However, multi placers don’t tend to make very straight lines, especially if you don’t have your drills lined up perfectly in the tray first, which is why the row alignment templates exist, to help line you and your tool up. The more drills you try to place at once, the more out of whack the row will become and then you must manually align the miscreants.
Where these multi-placers shine is in projects with large blocks of the same color such as backgrounds. With the skilled use of multi-placers, these projects will not take as long as those with a lot of ‘confetti”, a term which refers to “many colors scattered all around a small area” that MUST be placed one by one, or, if lucky, 2 or 3 at time with a small multi-placer. Now that we have these questions answered, let’s answer some more.
Are we limited to tediously poking only one drill at a time onto our canvas? Working on solid backgrounds feels like a nightmare.
You can purchase plastic or metal sets of attachments that fit into the top of the ubiquitous pink pen that will allow you to stick more than one drill at a time, from 2 to 7 gems at once I think I saw a 10 gem one, too. You can even pull out the little clay-holding single gem module from your pink pen and replace it with a multi-gem module and have a different accessory at each end. See Drill Picker Pens for the ergonomic pens for some of those sets. But they can also be purchased without buying another pen. You will soon have several hundred pink pens anyway. Might as well stick your excess multi-placers in them. https://amzn.to/4df4243 If you’d rather have every multi-tool available to you in one hand-held item, rather than constantly swapping pens, you can just rotate the tool, then check out this little hexagonal device that holds 6 multi-tools at once. https://amzn.to/4spjka6
I’m sorry, but 8 is NOT enough! I want to place more, More, MORE drills at once!
Scroll wheels are available that enable the creation of a single, uniform row featuring significantly more drills than is possible with other types of pen attachments. This one has a groove down the center that helps keep the line of drills straight. Warning: there’s a bit of a learning curve in getting the diamonds onto the wheel, because they may move as you are rolling across them. Try rolling across them in the opposite direction toward the STOP line.so that the row hits a “wall” rather than having the freedom to move away from your wheel. Practice, practice, practice. I finally mastered it. https://amzn.to/4bA8pUQ
Why is my multi-placer not filling up straight?
It’s all in how your drills are aligned in the tray. If your drills are not completely touching when you finish your shaking, your multi-placer will not fill correctly. Additionally, if you press too hard from one end, or move the tray when loading your multi-placer, you can move the drills out of position and they won’t attach properly. If you do not press your multi-tool in the direction of the STOP line, that could also be your issue. It’s a bit of a learning curve, so PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!
I am good at getting the drills straight on my multi-placers, but for some reason, I STILL can’t get them to line up on the grid correctly on some projects. This is because the grid on the canvas may not be totally aligned with the distance between the drills in the tray. The only fix for this one is to go back to one-by-one placement or spend a lot of time pushing the placed drills around to align them and fight the migration physics of the adhesive.
Here is a video showing how one of the largest multi-placers works. https://www.tiktok.com/@diamondart_queen/video/7634911299817852180?lang=en
Previous Question Answered: Alignment Techniques
Next Question to be Answered: Drill Storage After Kitting Down
I have been doing diamond art for over 10 years. My book was published under my pen name. You can contact me through my blog here at https://ei-kan.blogspot.com if you have any additional questions to add to this section or to notify me of any dead links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualified purchases. This book is available in its entirety on Amazon Kindle and there are some discount coupon codes for up to 15% off your purchases at select websites near the end of it And yes, I earn a few pennies from a few other sites mentioned as well, but not all.
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