Diamond Dots

Handy

MGF, Master Grumble Framer
Joined
Jun 17, 2005
Posts
787
Location
Manitoba, Canada
We've recently had an upsurge in diamond dot paintings. I bought one today and we mounted it in the heat press before it was started. The stickiness seems to not be affected. Has anyone tried mounting them after they have the gems on them? I'm going to complete this and we'll try it. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best way to handle these things? They are kind of.... crafty, so people don't want to spend a lot on them but we have to stretch or mount them or they look horrible.
 
I frame TONS of diamond dots. Yeah I've tried every mounting method besides heat activated drymounting. Stretching is ok, but that synthetic canvas doesn't stretch as well as natural and can easily look puckered and encourage more beads to pop off... even if they've sealed it. 99% of the time, I like to smooth it onto a self adhesive foamcore, double mat it, and put it behind glass in a frame. One visual experiment I'm having a hard time casting away was using strips of glittery washi tape on the innermost border. The adhesion isnt great so I'd have to use double sided tape underneath, but the vibrance was a great way to match the glistening beads with a "faux mat" that cost me pennies. Gives more bang for the customer's buck and encouraged them to frame even more! If you do end up doing a ton of them, find someone addicted and ask for their spare beads. I'm always filling in missing beads from my stash.
 
I have done 2. One was nice and square and easy-peasy. The other had been crushed before the dots were applied and was out of square to boot. I had to do a tracing of the image, transpose that to a mat and dig out one of the old Keeton Kutters to hand cut the opening (also not square). Getting the customer to mount them before working on them would be ideal, but not likely to happen as much as you would like.
 
I frame TONS of diamond dots. Yeah I've tried every mounting method besides heat activated drymounting. Stretching is ok, but that synthetic canvas doesn't stretch as well as natural and can easily look puckered and encourage more beads to pop off... even if they've sealed it. 99% of the time, I like to smooth it onto a self adhesive foamcore, double mat it, and put it behind glass in a frame. One visual experiment I'm having a hard time casting away was using strips of glittery washi tape on the innermost border. The adhesion isnt great so I'd have to use double sided tape underneath, but the vibrance was a great way to match the glistening beads with a "faux mat" that cost me pennies. Gives more bang for the customer's buck and encouraged them to frame even more! If you do end up doing a ton of them, find someone addicted and ask for their spare beads. I'm always filling in missing beads from my stash.
Yes we tried the stretching method to start but found it puckered up too much also. We heat mounted the one I got this morning and I've been sticking the beads on it with no issues so this seems a good way to go - IF you could educate people to get it mounted first. I'll do another one and then dry heat mounting it later.
 
I have done 2. One was nice and square and easy-peasy. The other had been crushed before the dots were applied and was out of square to boot. I had to do a tracing of the image, transpose that to a mat and dig out one of the old Keeton Kutters to hand cut the opening (also not square). Getting the customer to mount them before working on them would be ideal, but not likely to happen as much as you would like.
I think if you have repeat customers you could inform them about mounting first... but yeah, first timers, not so much.
 
We haven't tried heat mounting them, and we found that wrapping them around form board and stretching doesn't work so well because of the nature of the material they're mounted on. We did find that just tacking them down flat with the Attach EZ and then matting worked great. For a while we were seeing a few of them, but they seem to have already gone out of style.
 
Does anyone else sing David Bowie now?
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Bowie did the guitar tracks himself on that one.
 
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