Diamond dust is really just crushed glass. That's the whole secret. It's a nice name for finely ground glass glitter, and it has nothing to do with actual diamonds. When I first started out I went searching far and wide for crushed-diamond suppliers in the building trade, the sort who use it for drilling. It took me a few months to work out that it's just glass.
I use a top-grade glass glitter from a German company called Sigmund Lindner. It's the good stuff, but it's a bastard to use, so before you go hunting it down, do your research and start with testers. Cheaper diamond dust looks like a kid's craft table and falls off within months. This looks like light trapped on the paper, with a faint iridescent shimmer, and it stays for years.
The reason I keep coming back to it is that the glass is see-through. Lay down a solid colour, drop the dust over the top, and you still see the colour underneath. A flat yellow becomes a glittering yellow. The colour doesn't change, it just catches the light and moves. That's what pulled me in four or five years ago. I wanted to enhance a solid background on one print, and once I'd seen it I had to learn to do it properly.
Here's how it actually goes on. First I screen print a thick solvent varnish over the area I want to sparkle. The varnish is the glue. While it's still wet I pour the glass over the top, and it sinks in and holds. As the varnish dries it turns clear, so the glass ends up embedded in it, sealed onto the paper. That's the proper method, and it's why it doesn't shed all over your floor. It's rock solid.
Getting it even is the hard part. I set up a box, pour the glass across the top of the print in an even line, then lift the sheet and let it fall straight down in one pass. Shake it instead and you get a moiré, waves and patches where the coverage goes uneven, and you can't hide it. So it's one clean pour, every time. Every mistake goes in the bin.
It's also not a gentle material to work with. Glass splinters into your hands, and you can barely see the pieces. Worse, if a bit falls off and gets under a screen on the next job, it tears straight through the mesh. I wrecked a few screens before I worked out what kept happening.
Here's the thing a website can never show you. A photo flattens it. On screen it looks like a normal print with a bit of texture. In your hands, tilted towards a lamp or a window, it comes alive, and the whole surface shifts as you move it.
Diamond dust up close on “NEVRDULL”. Even here, a photo can't quite catch it.
I won't fake that. Plenty of shops drop a sparkle filter over the photo to sell the effect. I don't, because it isn't real. If a print of mine has diamond dust on it, you'll have to take my word for what it does in the light. I can tell you it's worth it.
“NEVRDULL” is the one to show you. It started with the things I collect, old tins, worn toys, a NEVR-DULL polish tin, matryoshka dolls, built into a still life and then covered in glass so the whole surface glints. The close-up above gives you an idea. The real thing does more.
It's not only for the still lifes. “Sleep On It” takes a bit of studio wisdom, spells it out in type, and gets the same glass over the top so it catches the light as you pass.
Some quick ones I get asked
Is it actually diamonds? No. It's crushed glass. The name is doing a lot of work.
Will it come off? Once the varnish has dried, the glass is embedded and sealed, so it stays where it's meant to. It won't shed onto your frame or your hands.
And why does it look better in person than online? Because sparkle needs movement and real light to read, and a still photo has neither. Tilt it towards a window and you'll see.