Among the Lily of the Valley Diamond Painting Kit

You know the posture exactly. Book held against you, one page in, eyes somewhere the page has nothing to do with. Someone painted that and grew lilies around it.

A young woman in a flowing violet gown stands mid-thought with the book still held close, and towering stems of lily of the valley rise on both sides of her toward a sunlit sky. The palette runs indigo and sky blue through the fabric and the distance, then hands the whole foreground over to white bells. Soft brushwork throughout, nothing hard-edged, more storybook plate than photograph. The gown is the largest continuous area and the easiest place to build momentum.

The pale end of the range is what makes it work. Of the 23 colors, DMC 162 through DMC 3858, several sit close to white, and those are the ones that give each little bell its own shadow instead of letting the flowers merge into one bright smear across the bottom third of the canvas.

The details

• 45 x 45 cm (18 x 18 in)
• Full coverage, round drills
• 23 DMC colors, DMC 162 to DMC 3858
• 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 25 to 30 hours, three or four weeks of evenings at a normal pace. The near-whites are the thing people get wrong here: tip two of them into the same tray and you will not get them apart again, so keep the packets labeled and work one shade at a time. This is a kit rather than a finished piece, and no frame is included. It ships rolled and should be flattened overnight before the first drill goes down.

It ends up above a reading chair, generally, which is a short trip from where it was made.