Diamond is a highly attractive material as a solid-state host for a class of crystal defect spin-based qubits, which exhibit high stability even under ambient conditions. Carbon-12 isotopically purified diamond is also spin free, allowing for exceptionally long coherence times. I will introduce the challenges and opportunities in this field and present the results of our ongoing efforts to identify new defects in diamond with long coherence times and high-quality optical interfaces, as well as our efforts to controllably create vacancy defects in solid state systems through multiphoton femtosecond laser nanofabrication.