But I’m here, and that’s the most important thing, right? I am also really closely acquainted with the Japanese healthcare system, and my medical terminology is getting way better than my casual conversation skill, especially with the help of translation apps.

I have been sketching on and off, though, and now I’m working to take those sketches and make them pixel perfect! I also came up with a great way to make easy hangers for the ones I’ve finished, and I’ll get a video of that process soon to show you how easy it is. It means I can display my finished samples and change them on a whim, which is nice to see them just hanging on the wall, knowing I made that.

On a related note, I think I’ve now figured out how to handle shipping to the US. Yes, it’ll still take a while, but now fortunately the shipping cost has been reduced. Due to the change in the JPYen to USDollar though, I’ve had to adjust the prices a bit, but while the numbers look bigger in the yen, it’s actually even more affordable for those in the EU, Canada, and US! So that’s a huge plus, right?

Expect to see more new things coming, and a hearty apology from me about the delays in everything – those of you with orders still outstanding, thank you so very much for being so understanding about all the health stuff happening, your kind words and thoughts mean a lot to me! Thank you a thousand times over for being such kind people – this community really is the best!

More to come soon, along with more videos and pictures of finished samples! Exciting!

<3 Sam

Swipe through to see each step, with a bit of explanation too on my thought process. I hope this inspires you to make your own pixel art, and if you want to have your own pixel art created into diamond paintings, just message me on my Instagram or FaceBook and I’ll chat with you on my process!

I usually start out at a larger size, and slowly scale it down and redraw it each time it gets smaller. This allows me to keep the elements in place, but also acknowledge how much detail can realistically work at the small size for diamond art. This is important to figure out shadows and highlights early on, too.

Once I have a sketch I like, at the correct size, I do one final clean outline pass. Having a good, crisp border is really vital to good pixel art, and is one of the easiest ways to know if something is just AI dropped into a program, or actual art with intention.

Color palettes are tricky, but I’ve started to get a handle on them. I’ve built all of the DMC colors into palettes in Procreate for reference, since diamond drill colors are based on those. It was a beast to do, but worth it!

Finding the colors is really vital. They can’t be too close to each other, but then again they can’t be too bright or dark too quickly. I aim for at least 2 lighter colors, the “main” mid color, and then 2-3 dark shades.

I recommend working with just one color for one element on it’s own layer – you can merge them down after a while if you really want to, but having them all separate allows you to quickly change the color if you find something is off.

So for this, I have each shadow and highlight for the hat on it’s own layer.

“Dithering” is kind of like creating little droplets of the adjacent colors to create a gradient without adding more colors.

I love being able to set symmetry for designs, because otherwise it’s really annoying to have to draw it twice, or copy/paste every time.

So backgrounds are the bane of my existence. It’s kind of why I love doing this space and galaxy burst backgrounds.

I created a custom brush that does a little scatter of 1 pixel dot that allows me to easily blend from one color to the next, creating this starry glow. It took a long time to get it right, but it’s a great help!

Also, I love drawing star bursts. Like too much.

I use a cross stitch program on my iPad to quickly check how it would look in DMC colors, and to make sure my palette is blending how I like.

DMC are embroidery thread colors that are standardized, and are the same standardized colors that are those numbers for the drill colors when you order a kit. While the software doesn’t let me declare things as glittery or ab or glow in the dark, it gives me a good idea of how it’ll come out. I check this kind of generation regularly as I’m designing, not just at the end.

Then I take the pixel art to my laptop, import it into an advanced cross stitch program, and fine tune it and pick the drill colors, clean it up manually, and get it ready in a format my kit creator can use!

Oh, and I have a huge set of color swatches of drills so I can check the color I am assigning to the drill in reality to make sure it looks how I want it to when you ultimately create it. I’ll snap a pic the next time I have them all laid out on my table, trying to pick the best colors lol

It’s a huge process, sure, but it’s really worth it for the final design.

The amazing BevBee did a review on her order from me (she was my very first order other than samples for myself!) and it’s been seen by a ton of people and I now have a bunch more followers on Insta and it’s crazy! So thank you to her – she’s also been behind the scenes giving me some really great advice I hope to bring to future designs, so please, go check out her YouTube and Patreon and Instagram and say hi with a follow/subscribe!

Isn’t she the greatest?!

Because so many of you have liked my art (I am so honored, thank you to everyone who’s reached out on my facebook and insta) and getting orders, I found a huge flaw in how I have things set up.

I like to be transparent, so I’ll tell it like it is – if you’re in the US, things be expensive.

I have a company (who mainly produces for a few well known companies btw, they’re doing this for me as a favor!) who does the work of getting my charts printed, kitted up, and shipped to you! Which is awesome, as there’s no way just little disabled me could manage inventory, packing up, and shipping all of these things, even with the help of Kuroneko here in Japan. I just can’t. Spoons and all. So they do that part of the work for me.

However, they are indeed in China (the lady who runs it is Japanese though, which is how I met her company). Which means… tariffs. Yes. The dreaded tariff. And now, it’s being required to be paid on the front-end of an order, and maybe even when you receive the package, I honestly don’t know any more. But it sucks for all of us. The orders I got these past few days are a huge windfall, don’t get me wrong (we’re having a problem with our visas and all sorts of junk I don’t want to put out there, but suffice to say we’re scraping by worrying about cat food before people food), but after web hosting, fees, and all that jazz, I actually lost money on most of them.

So I was at a conundrum. Business classes I took said I should do one of the following:

• Raise prices across the board for everyone
• Add the extra cost into the products, regardless of where you’re from
• Stop shipping for free and charge shipping costs and fees
• Quit

Well, the last one isn’t something I do lightly – I’m actually hoping to eventually expand enough to open a shop here in Japan and be one of the first Diamond Painting companies here, so the longer I’m active now, the better it’ll be if I try that next step.

I hate the idea of just padding in the extra costs into the products. I know it’s just the way things are done online, but it’s not okay by me. I think it’s shady and crappy. I charge enough extra to afford to pay for my hosting, iPad, and a few treats of going out to dinner or buying a new dress every now and again, but I don’t gouge customers to begin with. It’s not in my nature, and why I’m probably a shit business person.

I also like free shipping. Like, I personally like free shipping. I know it contradicts the above, but man, living overseas makes me really annoyed when I go to order something, pay a premium already because the US dollar to Yen is terrible right now, and then get hit with shipping that is 3x the cost of the item. So, I want to always have stuff ship free if possible because frankly, it’s easier on my end too to keep track of.

So the final option was to just charge the cost on orders from the US. That way, if you’re in Germany or Canada or Japan, you don’t get hit with those added fees. And if you’re in the US, I’m sorry, there is nothing more I can do for it. I actually made sure to make them cheaper than the actual shipping/fees to save you some money (I am a master at Excel formulas to figure things out!) to get me the minimum I need to cover the order and my overhead, so you’re not getting totally screwed either. But it’s the best I can do.

If you have an order in already (or were looking at the site while I was testing it – gosh I hope no one saw the “why is it calculating like that shipping should not be $4,000?!” panic for a few minutes) I’m still filling it, no worries. I’m not gonna be all “pay me more!” because frankly I just didn’t realize it was going to be on my end, I thought it would be something collected when they delivered it to you. That was my bad. But from now on, I’m keeping a very close eye on the costs and everything and will be adjusting them down as soon as I possibly can.

I also made it so if you spend around US$145 or so (￥20,000/２万円) it’ll be free shipping because I think that’s about the threshold where it kinda evens out?

So let me know what you think about this, sorry it was so long! Here’s a picture of my cats to make up for the essay.

A natural design with some witchy vibes, it is what I am all about when it’s not all cats or fan art.

It was a big experiment, which is why it’s not on the store yet, because I wasn’t sure how it would look as a diamond painting piece. I spent a long time trying to get the greens just right – this uses like 20 different greens, between the moth and the leaves! I was worried it wouldn’t work quite right, and I was worried too about the background color.

It seems like I always second-guess myself with background colors. I don’t know why, because this one has turned out fantastic so far! The greens gradient nice, without having random errant little weird-colored pixels all over the place. It’s kind of color blocking, but also not really.

But what is really cool about it is that, since the moons and outline is shimmery, it makes the leaves look matte! It’s a neat optical illusion, and one I’m hoping to make more use of in the future! It’s strange, for how shiny all of the diamonds are in general, that they can have this feeling of being matte while still also shimmering.

Such a cool hobby, and so fun to design!

I’m currently almost finished with my sample one, so expect to see a finished post soon, as well as seeing it in the shop! If you’re interested in this design, you can always contact me for it ahead of it being listed.

Well, I’m officially hooked!

Here are the first two samples I had ordered for myself, all finished and hung on the wall. Sure, I don’t have fancy frames for them, but they look good none the less.

Samus is also neat in that it’s both really, really more sparkly than I had thought it would be, with all the metal-like and crystal diamonds, plus, it glows! For real, the metroids (and their eyes) glow, which is super neat to me. I guess I never grew out of that phase.

And the crossroads with the mejiro too is really pretty. I think I like fairy dust diamonds more than anything, so I’m looking to design more work that utilizes them whenever I can.

I’ll get some video of them one of these days so you can see just how sparkly and shiny they are, but it’s not so much that it looks… tacky? I guess that’s the word. I was really afraid of that to be honest – I’ve seen some that just kinda aren’t my thing, but so far, I’m in love with these!

If you like these, too, please consider ordering the kits from me. I would really appreciate it and it helps me to want to keep making new designs!

Metroid: We Can Do It

¥10,000

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Size: 40cm x 50cm (Medium) Difficulty: Intermediate

Crossroads: Mejiro

¥5,500

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Size: 30cm x 30cm (Small) Difficulty: Easy

This one is based on Rosie the Riveter and the famous poster of her. Except this time, it’s Samus Aran in her Zero Suit, ready to take out some aliens! Because women get it done.

I thought the headband and pose would work great, and since Rosie is in blue overalls and Samus’s Zero Suit is blue, it just logically worked.

This was also a chance for me to order a sample to test some more special drills, to check on their quality and see how they held up. I was not disappointed!

This one features glowing diamonds (mostly for the metroids), crystal in the gun, and metal-like ones throughout. They’re all fantastic and I’m so glad I decided to use them with this design, I could not have picked a better design to try them on.

Here are some of my in progress shots of making my own of this design.

So much glowing. So many sparkles. It makes me so happy!

I love mejiro. They’re also known as the “Japanese White-Eye.” They’re these cute little chonky bright green birds that are a joy to see in the bamboo fields where they tend to live. Or in spring, they often perch on flowering trees like plums and cherry blossoms. They’re also the “state bird” of the Prefecture I live in, Oita. We have lived here for over a decade now, and these little guys, while rare in our fishing village, are just so cute to see (and hear) hopping around. They usually come in flocks, too, which is a treat!

So in honor of starting this new way of creating art, it seemed fitting.

The entire collection of “crossroads” art are also something I love. In every place you visit in Japan, if you look down, you’ll see something wonderful on occasion… the sewer caps! No joke, they’re really amazing, and everywhere has their own. They feature history, landmarks, animals, and characters the place is known for. Heck, even some tiny villages that you wouldn’t even think to check have their own! There is so much pride in your hometowns here, especially in the rural countrysides, that it’s a neat view into the place you’re walking around… but you have to remember to look down.

This one, with the mejiro, are from a small town in Oita, in the Nakatsu area, called Sanko-mura. It was one of our first “trips” outside of Nakatsu when we first moved to Japan, to visit some of the smaller places, and Sanko was one of the first because a friend lived there. It was where I really realized that each place has their own caps, and turned me into an avid hunter of them wherever we go. I might not live within a stone’s throw of Sanko any more, but still being in Oita both the town and the birds live close to my heart, and to me, they mean new starts.

I hope that this inspires you, too, into supporting this new thing. I know it’s hard to trust just some random website online, but know that I am a real human, an artist who thought they would only be in Japan for a year and a half in 2012, who still lives here with my husband and kitties. All of my work is original and hand-drawn, no AI here, so if you feel like supporting an independent artist, please consider it. We all truly appreciate you!

Oh, and the Japanese at the bottom of the diamond painting version says “日本へようこそ” (nee-hon eh yoh-koh-soh) which means “Welcome to Japan” which seems fitting.