I’m not talking about crafting in a game (though I am very slowly leveling my FFXIV crafting jobs each week still), but rather real life crafting. Lately, my gaming has been nothing much to write about because I’ve fallen into a pattern as I sometimes do in FFXIV when it’s between patches.

I’m still doing daily beast tribes, and might run alliance if other folks are up to it. But I’m somewhat taking a break from things like Expert and Copied Factory because in about a month or so, the next Tome patch is dropping, which means all the gear I’m wearing now is moot. So there’s really no reason in my mind to keep working on the set I have if my ilvl is good enough to move forward with the new content (and it is).

Our Zombie team has been playing 7D2D – and I haven’t updated a post here with our new war fort and adventures with copters… so I should write about that sometime this week. But aside from that, things are pretty quiet. Which leads me to the topic of this post.

Back during Prime Day on Amazon, I was surfing the lightning sales and ran across this thing. Aside from it being a crafting kit, I had no idea what this “diamond painting” was. I just thought the picture was cute and it was a cheap $8. Knowing that the holiday vacation was coming up, and I’d have some time to play around with it, I decided to get it.

I had to look up a video to learn what this craft was, because I’d never even heard of it. Turns out, it’s a blend between cross-stitch, paint by number, and bead working… all of which I’ve enjoyed in the past. But I hadn’t done any crafty stuff IRL for a long time.

Consider it like creating pixel art, but IRL!

I started working on it over the holidays, and was instantly hooked! There’s a real zen feeling when you’re focused on working on a “painting” as you’re lining up beads and slowly building a picture piece by piece.

I haven’t been much of a Facebook user for many years (aside from a few violin groups I’m a part of), but I couldn’t find blogs or communities out there for the craft aside from Facebook groups. So, I joined a few there and started to learn so much more about the craft. It’s also got me back on Facebook, which I never thought would happen, but not really in a social friends-list sort of way. I’m mostly there to see other people’s projects, get tips, offer what info I have, and get encouragement for my own projects.

Just like with every hobby I do, I wanted to make a blogging space for it somewhere. Some people keep a DP log, but I’m especially terrible about keeping hand-written type journals. Online blogging comes more naturally.

I considered putting some of it up here on this site, but then decided that my creative site at Sygnus.org was a better fit for it. So I’ve been creating my log of DP projects there.

So far, I’ve done a number of smaller projects – such as ornaments for my mini Christmas Tree. The very first project I finished, pictured above, was the largest I’ve done aside from the one I’m working on now.

I’m actually quite grateful for the hobby because I know without it, this past holiday would have been a lot more difficult for me. With the loss of my cat Sebastian, working on a new project and a new craft helped me keep my mind from wandering to sadder thoughts and gave me a calming outlet.

I even ordered away for a custom diamond painting of Sebastian, which I’m waiting to come in via mail. A lot of this is done over in China since the US hasn’t really caught on to manufacturing these kits. But you can send a photo to the makers and they will create a custom painting for you, complete with all the materials needed to make it.

Here’s the mockup sample of that:

Until then, I’ve been working on kits that I plan to give out as gifts to people this year. Yes, the bigger ones do take quite a bit of time to do, but as I said, it’s relaxing and (to me) quite rewarding.

So while I won’t spend a lot of time talking about it here on my blog (I might post finished pieces in the future if people want to see them), I did want to mention the fun new hobby I discovered and show you what I’ve been doing during the lull time in gaming.