Fun with Perler Beads

Whenever I make it down to SoCal I make a point of visiting all my favorite craft stores. My favorite place in the world is Tall Mouse Crafts, because they have the size of a Michael’s, the selection of a specialty store, and they let me shop wholesale right off the shelves.

But there’s also Shinoda’s, a wholesale floral mart that sells amazing stuff and the cheapest ribbon known to man; My favorite yarn store ever full of knowledgeable people and no outrageous prices, and they’ve got everything out where you can see it so you don’t have to pester anyone to fetch you more of everything you have a passing interest in; and of course, there’s the garment district in L.A. where I can buy designer fabric for NOTHING, in quality I could never get my hands on anywhere else.

The other day I took our duvet cover off the bed to take it to the dry cleaners (I made it out of copper silk dupioni. It’s GORGEOUS, but you can’t wash the sucker normally.) and when I finally got around to taking it, I found it shredded. I think it got stuck in the closet door and ripped to pieces. The thing was five years old after all, it had served its time. So for the past couple of weeks we’ve been sleeping with the ugliest old plaid comforter on the bed. It’s not out of place at all with the light wood and the african souvenirs and the brown pillows. Oh, it looks just great.

It took all the will I had left in my poor beleaguered body not to rip the thing into tiny pieces. I CAN’T STAND not having my house properly decorated the way I want it. I’ve been known to stay up for two days straight after moving in, never resting until everything had a place and looked great. So my beautiful bedroom with a plaid green and burgundy bedspread just made me want to cry.

With our budget as tight as it is, I couldn’t convince Bear to take a trip to the yarn store or Tall Mouse, but you better believe I refused to be talked out of a trip to the fabric mart.

This time I tried a new place in a different part of L.A. and I made out like a bandit. I didn’t go for the silk this time because theirs was overpriced, but I did find a plum fabric that will be beautiful and saved so much money I could buy fabric for curtains in the living room!

So, [deep breath] after all this exposition, my point is that I have a whole lot of work ahead of me, so I thought I’d better clear out my list of projects to show off.

Perler Bead Projects

I’ve been seeing so many cool portraits and things out of perler beads on Craftster, that I decided to try my hand playing around. I started by making a rug for my front door.

Here’s a close up.

Then that project left me with so many left over beads that I made a bunch of bracelet cuffs

And the other side

And a belt. The belt was a little tricky though because I had to smash those beads down flat to get them to fit on the clasp.

And on the crochet front, I made my friend Bottom a present for her new little girl

Here’s a close up of the stitches

And I made myself a cargo bag.

And I made The Good Twin an afghan that I keep forgetting to take pictures of.

Of course it looks really impressive when I list them all together like this, but the truth is that this is pretty much what I’ve worked on so far this year. That rug took me for-flinging-flanging-ever.