I
started making Perler beads back in 2011 when my best friend Cam told
me about something I may enjoy because I am a fan of ironing. Yeah.
It's that thing people tell me they don't do with their clothes as if
it is not obvious to me. I had never heard of Perler beads and to the
best of my knowledge had never seen one before. Little did I know
that seven years later Id be making designs I found online that
seemed impossible and having hundreds of designs stolen by others and
sold on Etsy and other sites. The design above is the first thing I
ever made and took two hours to do because I kept knocking beads over
and ironing too hard in parts.
When I
first started I would just copy a simple design online. This whole
new world of Perler's opened up to me. It took a long time to make
things and over time as I posted my images I made up my own set of
rules. 1) Give credit when using someone's designs by posting links
to their sites. 2) Take clear pictures so that people could create my
designs if they wanted to. 3) Try to make things that no one else had
made yet. This last one is the most fun because then I can see people
steal designs and talk about how hard it was to create.
I do
not have a place to sale my designs because I just give them away to
people. If I know what you like I'll just make you something. For
years people have said that I should sale my stuff online and
eventually I will but for now I am content with just making people
slightly more happy by giving them something I made with my own
hands. I have done a few pieces and tend to ask for the price of the
beads. When I made some Darth Vader designs for someone I realized
that making the same thing again sucks and made me miserable. Doing
the same thing three times made me never want to make a Vader design
or any kind ever again. People will see the stuff I make and say “I
don't have the patience to make something like that” and I think
“Not with that attitude.” For me it is about making something
that is nice to look at or hard to do. I barely make small designs
anymore. Things that used to take me three hours to do now take maybe
an hour and less if I have the beads separated already.
Here
are a few tips to anyone that wants to get started making Perler
beads that I wish I knew myself when I got started.
Buy
Your Beads From One Brand. If you buy Perler stick with Perler. That
is a company. There are many others but I've made the mistake of
mixing them and ended up ruining work. Some places make beads that
melt flat or at faster temperatures than others and it ends up
looking like shit. I also buy my beads from Joann's because they
almost always have deals or from Amazon.
You
Can Never Have Enough Black/White/Cheddar Beads. These are the colors
I run out of the most. If you do not see me posting designs for long
periods of time this is why. That and I have lots of others hobbies
other than beads. I also make weird music (Click here for
SpacebarDJ.blogspot.com to hear that) and thirteen other blogs. I
know cheddar sounds like a weird color to need but it is a shade of
yellow that highlights designs with yellow that make them look so
much better.
Expect
To Rage. There have been designs that no one will ever see because I
dropped my remote on my peg board or my tweezers. Yeah. You will need
tweezers. There are a hundred ways to ruin a design and you will
encounter some of them. It happens. If you can save a design you
should but if its just wrecked you can sigh heavily and start
something else.
Start
Small. What I mean by small is doing a small design and as few bits
as possible. Video game designs are the most popular so start with
video games like Mario Bros. After that you can move on to 16 bit
systems like Sega Genesis. Once you get past that next thing you know
you are doing arcade designs which run 32 bits and higher. The bits
just mean more detail, larger sizes, and more colors. The rust color
will become your friend. When you are at the Nintendo stage things
beyond that will seem impossible but this is a hobby where the more
you do the better you get actually applies. Oh. I'll just add having
good lighting. I've made so many things that had the wrong color
which I didn't see until the next morning. It is funny to see people
use my designs and copy my mistakes.
Find
Ideas Everywhere. Like I said, when I started I just copied other
folks designs. Then I started going straight to the source using
video game sprites. Sites like Sprite DataBase is a really good site
to get ideas from. I've also taken animated gifs and froze them for
images. If I feel like making my life difficult I'll use PixelStitch. On there you can take images and turns them into pixels to
make your own stuff. This is next level advanced shit that you should
not try to start off with. It's how I made the Scud design.
I hope
some of this nonsense helps you. When people comment I will answer
any questions and point you in the right direction.
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