Praise V Do Drill Pen Kit: A Craft Table Story

The first time I used one of those thin plastic pens that come free in a diamond painting kit, I lasted about thirty minutes. My right thumb started to ache, then the ache turned into a hot little knot at the base of the joint, and I put the canvas away. I have mild arthritis in that thumb, so I assumed the hobby had a time limit. About a year ago I bought the Praise V Do Diamond Painting Art Drill Pen Kit, mostly because I wanted a pen with a grip I could hold without pinching. I do my drilling at a folding table in my spare bedroom in Knoxville, and I have finished about forty canvases since I started four years ago.

Before the Praise V Do kit, my only pens were the stock ones from kits. I still have a handful in a drawer. They are fine for a small canvas or a short session, but they ask you to hold them like a pencil, and my hand does not do that for long anymore. I had hand surgery a few years back, which is how I ended up doing diamond painting in the first place. Knitting became difficult, and a friend handed me a kit to try. The stock pen was the part I dreaded.

The Praise V Do kit is simple. It comes with one pen, six screw-in stainless steel tips, and a small roller tool. That is the whole set. The ergonomic body gives my fingers more to hold onto than the stock pens do, so my hand curls around it instead of pinching. The tips screw in, which feels steadier than the thin tips on the stock pens. I keep one tip in the pen and the other five in a small dish on the table, because I am the kind of person who loses things between sessions.

The first week was an adjustment. The pen has some weight to it compared with a plastic stock pen, and I had to learn to let it rest in my hand instead of gripping it. Once I stopped squeezing, the difference showed up in minutes. I could work for an hour most evenings instead of stopping at thirty minutes. That is not a dramatic claim. It is just the difference between a hobby I do and a hobby I avoid. I finished a 14 by 14 inch hummingbird canvas this spring over about three weeks, roughly an hour at a time, and I used the Praise V Do pen for every drill on it.

I am not going to tell you a pen fixed my thumb. It did not. I still take breaks, and I still wear reading glasses when the symbols get small. What the pen did was remove the pinch. That sounds small until you have spent an evening with a stock pen and realized your hand is the reason you stopped, not your eyes or your patience.

The pen did not make me faster. It made me stop quitting after half an hour.

Here is how I use it at my table. I screw in a tip, press it into the wax from the canvas kit, and pick up one drill at a time. The tip holds the drill until I set it on the symbol. The six tips matter more than I expected. I use one for the main field and switch to a different tip when I am working around the edge of a color block. I do not know the exact sizes by heart, but having options means I am not forcing one tip to do every job.

The small roller in the kit is the one part I do not use much. I tried it on a finished section, and it works, but I have an EastyGold roller that fits my hand better, so the small one stays in the kit box. That is not a knock on the kit. It is just that I bought the two tools around the same time, and the bigger roller became my habit. If you do not have a roller yet, the one in the kit will get you through pressing a section flat.

The part that surprised me was how much the tips changed my rhythm. With a stock pen, I was always adjusting my grip between rows. With the Praise V Do pen, I set my hand down and move the canvas instead. That is slower in the beginning, because I had to break the habit of dragging the pen. Once I did, my rows looked straighter, and I was not stopping to shake out my hand every few minutes.

I also want to be honest about the weight. The pen is not feather light. If you are used to a plastic pen, the first ten minutes may feel strange. I noticed it most when I switched back to a stock pen for a tiny kit I was doing at the kitchen table. The stock pen felt like a straw. The Praise V Do pen felt like a tool. That is the best way I can put it.

My husband, Ray, teases me about my drill storage boxes and the small dish of pen tips by my chair. He says I have more tips than spoons. He is not wrong. But he also noticed that I stopped complaining about my thumb after dinner. That is the kind of review I trust more than a star rating.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you came over and asked whether the Praise V Do kit is worth trying, I would say this. If your thumb aches after half an hour, or if you find yourself gripping the stock pen like you are signing a check, try a pen with an ergonomic body before you decide diamond painting is too fiddly. The Praise V Do kit gives you six tips and a roller in the same box, so you are not hunting for extras. It will not make you a faster driller overnight. It will make the hour you spend at the table feel less like work. And if you are like me, that hour is the point.