Betsy Giansante and Regina Schobel’s class began diamond art as a craft and calming exercise, but once they had enough pieces of art, the class put them out to teachers and students to purchase.
“The time spent creating these gave us time to talk to the students and have a calming activity to take a break from work,” Giansante said.
The class started working on the diamond art last school year but did not consider selling it until November of this school year. The class created coasters, key chains, bookmarks, and prints.
“We wanted the students to take pride in their work and be happy when they saw people buying them. We wanted to raise money for community projects as well,” Schobel said.
Juniors Jordyn Barry helped create the art and Jordan Evans helped create the spreadsheets for pricing.
“I did a lot of behind the scenes work because I’ve never liked doing tasks that take a lot of detail,” Evans said.
Although math is not Evans favorite subject, he was able to apply the things he learned in the classroom to this project.
“I created spreadsheets, google forms and figured out pricing,” Evans said. “The pricing was based on the price we bought the supplies at and how much we could make in profit.”
When the class was prompted to sell them, Evans knew they were going to be a hit.
“I actually believed we would sell out pretty quickly. They did a good job creating the art and the prices were reasonable,” Evans said.
Within weeks, almost all of their art was bought and they received nothing but positive feedback.
“People have actually requested more because they loved the unique idea and it was something students were working on,” Giansante said.
The class is currently working on more art and plan to have a second sale before the end of the school year.
Linda Wharton • Feb 1, 2025 at 8:36 am
I was gifted a bookmark as a Christmas gift from Mrs. Giansante, and I love it! Please let me know when you’re going to sell more of your artfully crafted pieces – I will definitely be a customer!