Dere Be Craft
Apr. 25th, 2015 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenIn between coughing and sniffling, I ended up doing unexpected craft today. Using "Hama" AKA "perler" beads. These are the beads you put on a peg-board to make a design, and then melt them with an iron (with paper in between the beads and the iron so that the plastic doesn't stick to the iron). I don't remember ever having crafted with these as a child, but I stumbled across some Pinterest pins which pointed towards their potential for making interesting things, like boxes.
So... I made a set of seven hexagonal coasters on a "Settlers of Catan" theme. And a box to put them in. I am not so pleased with the box; the layers did not end up even. Though I am pleased with the lid of the box, it is a pretty coloured spiral with a thick black border.
And the coasters are pretty good too. Five coasters for the five resource hexes, one coaster for desert, and one for water. Some things were a bit frustrating due to my limited colours; Lincraft didn't have all that big a range when I bought the beads on Friday.
(No, I don't have photos. Yet)
Some interesting things they don't tell you when they entice you with fascinating tutorials:
* If you iron the beads only on one side, the piece curls up; you need to put it underneath weights (like a pile of books) to ensure that it will remain flat until it cools down
* If you aren't careful, the piece will get embossed by whatever you piled on top of it (oops!)
* If you iron the beads on both sides, it is more difficult to make uniform shapes, because the shape is no longer being held by the peg-board, and it will become thinner and spread out more, depending on how long/hard you iron it. Ironing on both sides does reduce the curl, though.
* Even if you only iron the beads on one side, there is no guarantee that the piece will still have holes in all the beads; which kind of messes things up if one was counting on those holes. I was hoping to be able to make some string-art earrings with these beads, but I'm not sure I'll be able to make it work, now
* Some beads are more melty than others. This may be because different manufacturers have slightly different formulas, since I noticed the most difference between the two different brands which Lincraft sells.
I had originally intended to assemble the box by sewing the layers of it together (as shown in at least one tutorial) but I didn't even try that when I saw that not every layer had holes where I needed them to be. So I hot-glued them together instead, but I didn't manage to get the layers to line up properly, possibly because they weren't rigid enough. As I said, not pleased. But it still works as a box to put the coasters in.
Whenever you do a craft for the first time, it usually turns out to be not quite so simple as it appeared...
So... I made a set of seven hexagonal coasters on a "Settlers of Catan" theme. And a box to put them in. I am not so pleased with the box; the layers did not end up even. Though I am pleased with the lid of the box, it is a pretty coloured spiral with a thick black border.
And the coasters are pretty good too. Five coasters for the five resource hexes, one coaster for desert, and one for water. Some things were a bit frustrating due to my limited colours; Lincraft didn't have all that big a range when I bought the beads on Friday.
(No, I don't have photos. Yet)
Some interesting things they don't tell you when they entice you with fascinating tutorials:
* If you iron the beads only on one side, the piece curls up; you need to put it underneath weights (like a pile of books) to ensure that it will remain flat until it cools down
* If you aren't careful, the piece will get embossed by whatever you piled on top of it (oops!)
* If you iron the beads on both sides, it is more difficult to make uniform shapes, because the shape is no longer being held by the peg-board, and it will become thinner and spread out more, depending on how long/hard you iron it. Ironing on both sides does reduce the curl, though.
* Even if you only iron the beads on one side, there is no guarantee that the piece will still have holes in all the beads; which kind of messes things up if one was counting on those holes. I was hoping to be able to make some string-art earrings with these beads, but I'm not sure I'll be able to make it work, now
* Some beads are more melty than others. This may be because different manufacturers have slightly different formulas, since I noticed the most difference between the two different brands which Lincraft sells.
I had originally intended to assemble the box by sewing the layers of it together (as shown in at least one tutorial) but I didn't even try that when I saw that not every layer had holes where I needed them to be. So I hot-glued them together instead, but I didn't manage to get the layers to line up properly, possibly because they weren't rigid enough. As I said, not pleased. But it still works as a box to put the coasters in.
Whenever you do a craft for the first time, it usually turns out to be not quite so simple as it appeared...
no subject
Date: 2015-04-26 03:02 am (UTC)8-)
but as you point out, it's harder than it looks and after making a few little designs I kind of lost patience with the "curl" effect.
I think the bigger the piece, the more it curls, too.
By the time I was making the box, I got a kind of production-line going: iron the piece, take it off the pegboard, place it between two ceramic tiles (had used one of the ceramic tiles for ironing on), turn off the iron, work on the new piece... and by the time I had finished that piece, the previous piece was cooled down and flat.
Photos are now posted.