Christmas Teddy Bear Diamond Painting Kit – A Beary Merry Christmas

Count backward from the first weekend of December, allow four weeks of evenings, and you land somewhere in early November. That is when a 45cm holiday canvas wants to be started. Later is fine too. It just means the thing hangs in January, and nobody in the house objects.

A teddy bear sits beneath a scatter of stars with wrapped gifts stacked around her, holly sprigs at the edges and candlelight doing the work in the middle of this diamond painting kit. The reds run deep rather than bright, the evergreens keep their darkness, and the golds carry the glow outward from the candle flames to the ribbon on the parcels. It reads as a mantelpiece at about nine in the evening, when the room has been decorated for a while and has settled down.

Twenty-three DMC colors is a wide range for a square this size, and most of that width sits in the reds and the golds. That is what keeps candlelight from flattening into one yellow. The light gets a hot center, a warm middle and a dim outer edge, and there are drills for all three.

The details

• 45 x 45 cm (18 x 18 in)
• Full coverage, round drills
• 23 DMC colors, DMC 320 to DMC 3865
• Adhesive canvas printed with clear symbols and a color legend
• Sealed, numbered, DMC color-coded drill packets
• Diamond stylus pen, grooved tray, wax refill and tweezers

Straight talk

Roughly 25 to 30 hours, so three or four weeks if you work an evening at a time. Full coverage means every square inch takes a drill, so there is no easy blank section to rest in. Round drills are the forgiving shape and sit down straight. The canvas arrives rolled and wants a night flat under something heavy. No frame included.

Then it goes up near the candles it was placed by, and it stays there as long as you feel like keeping the season going.