Peacock Blossom Branch Diamond Painting Kit – Celadon Vale

Most rooms have one wall that is wider than it is tall, and most art is not. Above the sofa, over a headboard, along a hallway: the shape is the problem long before the subject is.

This peacock does the work that shape needs. He perches mid-canvas on a blossom-laden branch and his tail spills off to one side in ribbons of teal and bronze, which is how a panorama earns its width. Pink roses crowd the branch beside him. Behind everything a misted mountain vista recedes in pale celadon and gray, giving the eye somewhere to rest between the jeweled parts. The palette is vintage rather than tropical: muted teal, dusty rose, soft gold.

Twenty-eight DMC colors running from 224 to 3866 is what keeps the tail from banding. Every eye in the plumage gets its own step from deep teal into bronze, and the mist behind the mountains gets enough near-whites to read as mist instead of a blank field.

The details

• 90 x 50 cm (36 x 20 in)
• Full coverage, round drills
• 28 DMC colors, DMC 224 to DMC 3866
• 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 45 to 55 hours. That is a long sit, and the panoramic shape wants a table you can leave set up rather than a lap tray. Round drills are the forgiving kind, so the difficulty here is stamina rather than technique. This is a kit, not a finished painting: the canvas arrives rolled and blank, and it should flatten under something heavy overnight before the first drill. No frame included.

The wall was always that shape. This is the first thing that has agreed with it.