Perler Beads: More Final Fantasy Dragons

Sorry, this isn't a tutorial... but don't worry, there are more coming! Instead, this is the latest batch of my Final Fantasy VI perler projects.

Whelk (not a dragon)

Skull Dragon

Ice Dragon

Storm Dragon 

Blue Dragon

Full albums including in progress pictures here and here.

Perler Beads: A Tutorial on a New Hobby

I've had some friends as of late express interest in getting into the art of perler beads, and I have also had people ask for more blog posts, so I figured I'd be extra efficient today.

First, let me give you a very quick background on beads.

There are three big brands of beads available that can be used to make the sorts of pieces I have been posting on my blog for the last (nearly) two years: Perler, Hama, and Nabbi. Perler is almost exclusively available in the U.S., while Nabbi and Hama are more widely distributed in Europe. To date, I have only purchased Perler beads, valiantly resisting the temptation of expanding my color palate. Therefore, I am really only an expert (of sorts) on Perler beads, not Hama or Nabbi. However, I have linked all three official stores below in case anyone is interested in looking at other brands.

Perler
Hama
Nabbi

That being said, let's jump in.

Main supplies you need for making awesome bead art:
- beads
- trays
- iron
- parchment paper (NOT wax paper)
- storage containers of some kind

Perler beads are sold three main types of packaging: in mixed buckets, each holding up to 22,000 beads, in trays with 250 beads of each color in little compartments, or in pre-sorted bags of 1000 beads each.

OPTION ONE

As you might guess, it is much more cost effective to purchase the mixed buckets than the individual colors based solely on cost per bead, but if you decide to start with mixed buckets, be warned that you will, at some point, need to sort them (or spend quite a bit of time digging for that one color you really need right now). Some people really enjoy sorting. If that's you, hooray! Buy a bucket. If you aren't sure, buy a small bucket. They come in 11k or 22k sizes and are often available at Joann Fabrics or Michael's. For the love, use a 40% off coupon if you can find the buckets at either store. Joann and Michael's always have 40% off coupons (or sometimes 50% off). You can get a 22k bucket at Joan Fabrics for $14.99 ($24.99 retail minus 40%). Otherwise, if your local stores don't have the buckets, you can get them at the links off Amazon above (not quite as good of a deal though). These mixed buckets are a great way of getting a good array of colors without dropping a fortune. The buckets come with the following colors:

Black, blush, brown, butterscotch, cheddar, clear, dark blue, dark green, grey, hot coral, kiwi lime, light blue, light brown, neon green, neon orange, neon pink, neon yellow, parrot green, pastel green, pastel lavender, pink, plum, purple, raspberry, red, tan, toothpaste, turquoise, white, yellow.

You probably don't care about that list now, but you might later.

Keep in mind that if you buy buckets, eventually you will still want to augment your color selection by buying the individual 1000 count bags, because only about half the colors are in the bucket.

The buckets come with a piece of ironing paper, which can be reused many times. Eventually though it will start to get kind of brown and crispy, at which point it probably should be thrown away.

OPTION TWO

Presorted trays are also available at Joann Fabrics or Michael's if you are lucky. Again, use a 40% off coupon if you go this route. You won't get as many colors, and you do pay more per bead than the mixed buckets, but they are pre-sorted. Each tray has 12 colors (250 of each) for a total of 4000 beads. (There are a few trays with 6 colors/250 of each as well, though these are harder to find.) To see all the options for bead trays, browse here on Perler's official site. These trays normally retail for $12.99 at craft stores. No ironing paper is included, but if you have parchment paper in your kitchen, that will do the trick. More on that later.

It is worth noting that Perler also offers smaller activity buckets with ~5,000 beads and a few small trays. These are usually around $10 and come with maybe 6-10 colors of beads (it's been a while since I bought one so I don't remember exactly). They are typically themed. I bought one or two but for the most part I didn't think they were a very good deal.

OPTION THREE

Individual bags are by far my favorite way to buy beads. If you go this route, the most cost effective way to do so is to buy them directly from Perler's website. Each bag retails for $2.99 in craft stores, but they only cost $1.99 per bag if you purchase more than 6 at that link. Normally shipping is only free on orders over $60, but if you put in the code BEADS25 at checkout, you can get 25% off AND free shipping at $45. Not too shabby. That drops the price to $1.49 per bag, which is the cheapest I've been able to find anywhere. If you buy bags in craft stores for $2.99 with a 40% off coupon, it's not too much more, but you can only buy one bag per coupon. I will do that if it's an emergency and I need a certain color the same day, otherwise I get all my beads off that website. 

As a side note, you will need to get 23 bags of beads to hit $45 and get free shipping with BEADS25. If you order 23 bags, your total will be $34.27 pre-tax. That gets you 23,000 beads - and you can see it is more expensive than the mixed buckets, but you don't have to do ANY sorting when they arrive. Plus the individual bags are the only way to get certain colors.

If you do decide to branch out into other brands of beads, I hear there is an ebay seller who imports beads from Europe as well as a fourth brand from China called Artkal (rumor has it Artkal is the overseas manufacturer for Perler beads sold in the US, but I don't know how true that is.). Here's her shop. If I ever decide to expand to Nabbi, Hama, or Artkal, I'll probably order through her.

One more piece of advice. I have, on occasion, found a (possibly knock-off) brand of Perler beads called Fun Fusion. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, but do NOT buy the 1000 count bags of beads labeled Fun Fusion if you see them. They melt differently than Perler beads and look, in my opinion, kind of ugly melted. The big tip-off that you found Fun Fusion beads, besides the name, is that the back is in Chinese. Pictures below for your convenience.

The most annoying thing about these beads is they are ALMOST the same color as the perler bead equivalent, but just far enough off that you can tell if you look closely at a finished sprite that uses both. The beads pictured above are both supposedly periwinkle, but the ones on the right are clearly darker.

And that I think about covers it for buying beads. Also, I think this post is getting too long, so tune in next time for more info on trays, irons, parchment paper, and online resources! (And if you're lucky, a discourse on what colors of beads I think are worth buying!)

Final Fantasy VI Enemies

I've been making a lot of Final Fantasy VI enemy sprites lately, so I thought I'd share.

Chupon 

Chupon post-ironing

Brachosaur

Brachosaur post-ironing

Chupon reaching out to pull Brachosaur's tail

Behemoth

Behemoth post-ironing

Next up is Tyranosaur, and I kind of want to do all the dragons too. And don't worry, in case you forgot, we already did Ultros last year! What is your favorite Final Fantasy enemy?

Perler Beads: Super Mario RPG Coasters and Custom Sprites

We got another commission recently, this time for a wedding! We were asked to make Mario and Princess in a tux and wedding dress, which meant choosing existing sprites from a Mario game and recoloring them in the appropriate attire. Here's how it turned out:

Super Mario RPG Custom Sprites: Mario and Princess in wedding garb

The final product also included a perler piece saying "[blank] Family Est. Jan. 2014". The whole thing was framed by the person who commissioned it, which really added a nice finishing touch.

My other recent project was inspired by the commission, actually; in looking up Mario sprites, I discovered that Super Mario RPG already has sprites of each character's head in a circle, which happen to be just the right size to use for coasters. So of course I had to give it a try!

Super Mario RPG Coasters

I really like how these turned out too! Now I just need to put some cork backing on them, and I'll list them in our shop!

I thought January was supposed to calm down after the holidays...

... but instead it's been just as busy. This week I had things going on every single evening, and while they were fun things, I was definitely ready for a weekend come Friday night. (So much so that I bailed on my Friday night obligation in favor of staying home and playing Diablo III.)

So, quick recap:
- Monday was my birthday, which was delightful. Coconut milk ice cream, fun presents, and sushi, not to mention crepe paper covering my doorway in the morning.
- Tuesday we hosted book club, but it turned out only one other person showed up. It was actually quite nice. My dairy free/gluten free brownies turned out well, and I got to eat a lot of them myself since nobody came.
- Wednesday we went to the temple.
- Thursday I attended a service project extravaganza at church, where I helped make 100 valentines with goody bags for orphans. Then I hit up the Target for their clearance event, but I only found a few things that were worth buying.
- Friday we already covered.
- Saturday was Stake Conference. So was today, for that matter, though thankfully not in the evening for this session.

Work is going well, and Nathan's new batch of classes seem to be interesting (if a bit heavy on reading). I've been listening to audio books on my way to and from work (it's a 35 min commute each way; not terrible, but long enough that radio wasn't going to cut it) and in the last month and a half have managed to finish 4 and start on a fifth, all adult fantasy (two epic by Lois McMaster Bujold, two urban by Patricia Briggs, and the newest is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman). I am definitely soliciting suggestions for what I should listen to next, so let me know if you have any favorites you think I'd like! I'm limited to what the OC public library offers, but they do have a pretty good selection from what I've seen.

Oh! And of course I almost forgot to mention our super secret project that has officially launched as of last Monday! Nathan is reviving his YouTube channel and has begun posting new videos every day. They're "let's play" videos, where he records himself playing a game with him offering commentary throughout the gameplay. As a special feature, once a week (on Mondays), the "let's play" he posts will also feature a simultaneous video of me making a perler bead sprite related to the game. These are called "Perler Play" videos, and after they are posted, we also offer the featured perler sprite in our etsy shop. Check out the first one here, and stay tuned for a new one tomorrow!

Perler Beads - Custom Starcraft Cubes

We got a sweet custom order in our Etsy shop before Christmas for a custom made perler cube with the three Starcraft logos on the sides. I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out in the end, so I thought I'd share!

3 Starcraft perler cubes

Finished Starcraft Perler cube

Terran logo in Perler beads

Protoss logo in Perler beads

Zerg logo in Perler beads

This particular version has interlocking sides so that it can be used as a die to determine who to play in Starcraft 2, but I don't think it would be very difficult to modify my design to make it open and close. It would also be cool to have a version where the logos are attached to a white cube instead of being part of the cube itself -popping out of each side, sort of, to give more depth. So many possibilities!

Sunday Update

Just a quick weekend blog post to let people know what I've been up to. I'm hoping to do these every Sunday, or at least fairly regularly.

The new job is going well. I worked on brainstorming new product ideas this week and fleshing out my ideas to figure out which ones are feasible. If you have any brilliant ideas for dietary supplements that you wish you could find but seem to be sold nowhere, feel free to let me know. (I make no promises.) I'm looking forward to everything picking up a little now that the holidays are over.

Christmas vacation was lovely, and involved driving to my parents' house, visiting with them and a brother and sister, drinking fresh orange juice every day, going shopping, and relaxing. And we brought back tons of oranges, grapefruit, and lemons to prolong the enjoyment! Speaking of citrus, I also received a dwarf Valencia orange tree for Christmas from my mother-in-law, so I'm excited to have my own (small) source of oranges at some point. It currently has 4 on there that are still a ways off from being ripe.

I've been trying my hand at origami as of late as well, since I go a big stack of origami paper for Christmas too. Here's what I've done so far:

box, elephant, crane, more complicated elephant, another box

I really like the pink elephant, and the box on the right currently holds perlers that I drop on the floor and don't pick up until later. Now the question is what to make next...

Nathan and I have also been working on a super secret project that we should have more information on soon (like, in a week or two), so stay tuned! It's related to our etsy shop, but that's the only hint I can give yet.

In other news, we went shopping last Saturday to DSW (my favorite shoe store) and Joann's, and I just have to show off one of my receipts from the purchase I made...

That's right, I got a pair of pink heels for a penny. Not too shabby. I also got a ton of remnants at Joann's for under $5, which was also very exciting, but I'll spare you another picture.

I've been playing through the newest Zelda game (A Link Between Worlds), and finally beat it on Friday, only to start over on hard mode yesterday. In case that wasn't a big enough clue, I really, really liked it. If you have a 3DS or 2DS, you should totally buy and play it. Super clever puzzles, decent plot, and really pretty graphics. And, in fact, I do turn on the 3D (especially in dungeons) to help with the platforming bits, which is more than most games manage. (It is playable without 3D, just easier in certain parts with it.)

This is the first week of a new term for Nathan, plus his interview for an internship with Microsoft is on Friday, and I of course will be going to work as per usual, but hopefully I'll have some fun/interesting updates for you next week. Happy new year to all!