Last Wednesday, 8 teens showed up to make things out of Perler beads! Perler beads, generically known as fuse beads, are little different colored beads you arrange on a pegboard. After you've got the image you want, you place parchment paper over it and iron them for a minute. The beads will melt a little, fusing together. Once it's cooled, you can take them off the pegboard and it'll stick! There were lots of patterns to choose from (doing an image search at Google will bring you lots of results, as well as Pinterest, or you can check out Kandi Patterns, a website specifically for fuse bead and pony bead patterns), and I also had some iPads on hand with Bead It! installed on them, which can make a bead pattern out of any picture! The print-out patterns were definitely more popular. Our stock of white beads was unfortunately quite low, so improvisation had to be made (someone used grey instead of white for R2D2 and he came out really good actually). Below are some pictures of the event.

happy sushi roll!

creeper with glow-in-the-dark beads!

Hello Kitty!

Beamo's arms didn't make the fusing process...

Sailor Moon was so large it covered a second board!

master ball

This was a really fun event that I'm definitely looking forward to doing again. If anyone else wants to try, you won't have to wait long, as we'll be doing more Perler Beads at the Municipal Library branch on Tuesday, July 8 at 4:00.