Gothic Circus Diamond Painting Kit

The curtain is already parted and the lanterns are already lit, and there is nobody standing outside in the snow. Whatever is happening in that tent started without you.

A striped big top rises against a smoky winter sky in black, ivory and blood red. Red velvet curtains hang open around a warm glowing entrance, wrought-iron lanterns flank the snow-dusted ground, and a crimson ribbon winds down the path toward you like something left out on purpose. The light in this one comes from only two places, the doorway and the lanterns, and everything else falls away from them into smoke and snow. The stripes give you long clean runs to work; the sky does not, and that contrast is the rhythm of the whole piece.

At 55cm the sky gets room to be a sky. Twenty-one colors running from DMC 225 to DMC 3865 carry the snow and the smoke through several near-whites and greys, which is the difference between weather and a flat dark panel behind the tent.

The details

• 55 x 55 cm (21.7 x 21.7 in)
• Full coverage, round drills
• 21 DMC colors, DMC 225 to DMC 3865
• Adhesive canvas with printed symbols and color legend
• Sealed, numbered, DMC color-coded drill packets
• Stylus pen, grooved tray, wax refill and tweezers included

Straight talk

Roughly 30 to 40 hours, and this is the largest canvas in the square range at 55cm, so clear a table you can leave set up. Be honest about the dark areas: they are the slowest part, so alternate an hour of sky with a section of tent stripe rather than saving all the black for the end. What arrives is a kit, not a finished picture, and there is no frame. Unroll the canvas flat under a weight the night before you start.

Then the doorway stays lit on your wall, and it still does not tell you what is going on inside.