Have you discovered all of the great things that you can do with perler beads? These craft supplies are endlessly versatile and entertaining for kids and adults alike. They are small, plastic beads that can pieced together to form almost any shape you can imagine. With only a small bit of heat applied to fuse the pieces together, your previously loose beads become fused together to create your new incredible perler beads creation. It’s a popular family time activity, great for summer activities when it’s too hot outside or winter activities when it’s below freezing and it chills you to even look outside.
If you are trying to figure out how to entertain children for a rainy day, perler beads are great for hours of fun. If you aren’t the type of person that is great about coming up with shape ideas on your own, there are perler beads ideas books out there that can give you inspiration for new creations. Say your child is obsessed with trucks; the two of you can create a personalized, customized truck together.
The first thing that you need to do to create that perfect truck is to choose the pegboard that makes the shape of a truck. The perler bead company has a lot of stock templates to choose from, so you might find the perfect shape for your design from those stock shapes. If you can’t find that shape from the stock pegboards, they also make interlocking, larger pegboards that you can piece together to form your needed templates. Additionally, you can buy two smaller pegboards and link them together for one bigger surface.
Steps to Make Perler Beads into your Finished Design
If you have gotten beyond the design stage of your creation and have moved on to actually creating your object, such as your child’s truck, the next step is to choose your colors. Perler beads often come in large tubs with many colors, so pick out the color perler beads that will form the best look and design for your intended final product.
You can get tubs of perler beads as large as twenty thousand or more. However, the vast number of perler beads can easily get lost or be digested by a small child, so be very careful when it comes to how many to start with at once.
After choosing your colors, you then have place the beads over the pegs in the right shape and pattern to create your truck (or, of course, whatever you are making). Proof your design, because now is when you can make changes, because the next step is when it becomes permanent. The heat is on the way….
Once your perler beads are in your desired placement on your pegboard, the next step is to fuse them together through the application of heat. To do this properly, you will place a piece of parchment paper over the pegboard and then put an iron on top of the parchment paper. With a dry iron on only medium heat, you will slowly apply heat to the parchment paper. Rub the iron over the parchment paper very slowly in a wide circle. It will only take about ten seconds, and it they will fuse together. Anytime heat this intense is involved, be sure to have an adult supervising the activity.
After that step, you are going to flip your design over and do the other side. Take this step slow, so that you don’t accidentally pull it apart. So you will slowly remove the parchment paper, turn the perler beads over, and repeat the ironing process on the opposite side.
And that’s it! You’ve created your individual creation with perler beads.
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