I received this Tree of Life Diamond Painting Kit from Fansells.com and here’s a link to it. Tree of Life 30 x 40 cm Link: https://tinyurl.com/u69z8w7 This diamond painting uses round drills and if I had to recommend a size, I’d say you’ll be able to see the image a lot better if you buy a larger sized canvas. I’ve seen this 16 x 20 inches and it is much easier to recognize the tree close up. Any time you buy a diamond painting with a lot of detail, it’s much better to go larger..just my two cents on it. The tree of life that I got is about 9 1/2″ x 13 1/2″ inches. I had a large piece of framed art work that I’d bought at Kohls a long time ago, and decided I no longer liked it. I decided to use the frame and existing mat for my tree of life diamond painting.

To do this, you’ll want to first trim the corners of the canvas that has no diamonds on it, almost to the diamonds…maybe 1/8″ away from the corner. I folded each side of my canvas and made sure the fold is right up to the diamonds. I then put a row of double sided tape on the side of the fold that would be where the finished image is, and then a row of tape on the edge of the side and one more row about half way between the two rows of tear tape. Then I removed the backing from the tear tape and folded the edge back to the diamond row. I pressed down well and then went to the another side and did the exact same thing…Do this to all four sides, making sure they are well taped down. I added tear tape to the back of the painting and all four sides, as well as several rows of tape through the center section…this ensures that if the diamond painting is framed without glass or with glass and mats, the painting won’t shift once framed. More tear tape is better than less... I had a green large piece of art paper that I bought at an art store that was going out of business. You could use a piece of poster board for this instead if you can’t find large pieces of art paper. Here are some examples of art papers they sell at Hobby Lobby. https://www.hobbylobby.com/search/?text=art+paper

I took the framed artwork that I already had on hand and took it apart, removing the different layers by bending back the staples that held things in place. The matting on it was blue and I didn’t feel like changing that out, but wanted to ensure another layer that fit the colors of my tree of life. I used the green art paper I mentioned above, and cut it to about an 1″ smaller than the size as the cardboard backing and then using white artist’s tape I bought from dickblick.com, taped the green paper to the back of the matting. I then cleaned the glass from the frame and laid the frame face down on my desk, put the glass in place, and then laid the diamond painting in the center of the green matted layer and made sure it was well adhered before flipping it over and laying it in place in the frame. When you do this, make sure the top of your painting is also at the top of the frame where the hook to hang it is attached. Then put the cardboard backing on it and used my Tim Holtz scissors, and pushed the staples in place to make sure the artwork would stay in the frame. I used masking tape, and taped the cardboard to the back of the black frame. I made sure there were two rows of masking tape so the cardboard and frame both had a good layer of masking tape on it. In the end, I was happy with my frame job and don’t think I would have done anything differently, other than using a bigger tree of life image..

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