Hello friends!

My name is Sam, and I am the artist on this site.

In 2012, my husband took a job as an English teacher in Japan. While we were only supposed to be here for 18 months, that has turned into more than a decade of living in the rural Japanese countryside. We currently live in a small fishing village on the southern main island of Kyushu, and have no real plans of leaving any time soon.

Back in the US, I was a professional costumer for theatre with a side business of making cosplay (back before people even knew what cosplay was!) as Taeliac Studio. We were a regular feature at cons in the upper midwest, and still keep in touch with a lot of our con buddies and the happenings there.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to move my (12!) sewing machines, various dressforms, and piles and piles of fabric with me, so I had to find another creative outlet. Once I got an iPad Pro, I was off to the races, doing things I had only dreamed about – illustrations for friend’s businesses, educational materials, and even a few children’s books for friends to use in their lessons. For a very long time, you could find all of my fan art, mostly of Final Fantasy 14, on clothes, jackets, and household goods.

Due to some really bad health issues that left me disabled, I had to put that all on pause in 2024, as it was getting to be too much for me to manage. You can still get a ton of my stuff on RedBubble and Teepublic, and some designs for textiles on my Spoonflower, too, but I wasn’t able to keep doing what I loved, which really bummed me out.

A good friend here in Japan, who was going through her own health issues, got me turned onto the idea of diamond painting. I had been looking for a new hobby I could do in the evenings, and something new to try to do with my art. After an arduous task of finding a supplier for kits with my artwork on them, I finally found a gem of a place, where I work directly with their artists to get my artwork on kits and sent to directly to you! I’ve ordered half a dozen for myself so far, and my piles of “in progress” canvases just keeps growing! I am hooked.

That friend convinced me to set up an online store, as she thinks other people will like my artwork as much as she does. And hence SamInJapan(dot)Art was born.

Every piece of artwork here is done by me, by hand, pixel by pixel. Some are re-imaginings of art I’ve made over the years, some are completely new, but each and every one is something I love. I don’t use AI to build them, and I don’t just convert my art to diamond painting canvases – I draw them all from scratch, and then I personally create the charts and colors used to have the most impact. You won’t find fuzzy, down-scaled images, AI with extra fingers, or muddy colors here. I am an artist first and foremost, and I hope it shows in the designs you can create and show off in your own homes.

Because it’s just me doing all of this myself, I do ask that you be patient when it comes to correspondences, because between the time zones and how many “spoons” I can manage a day, it can get overwhelming, but I assure you, I really appreciate every kind word and interest you show me. And know that every purchase helps me, my husband, and our kitties continue to live and create in our little corner of Japan!

If there is any art you want to see, anything you think would be fun, or even if you want a change to something (like “oh, this would be better in my house if the background was blue instead of purple” or “I wonder if I can have my name on this?”), just reach out and ask! It may take me a little time to set it up for you, but I will gladly do it if it’s within my ability to. So reach out and contact me, and consider ordering a kit if you like my art. It means the world to me that you’re willing to support an independent artist.

Sam
(in Japan)

• @SamInJapan
• SamInJapanArt