I boxed up all our “melty beads” last week. That’s what we called the fuse beads made by Hama or Perler beads. We have done so many projects over the years with these beads. We’ve made refrigerator magnets, items for mobiles, package tags, Christmas ornmanets, and much more.
If you’ve never used these beads, you should give them a try. They come in all sorts of colors, even clear, sparkly and glow-in-the-dark. You place the beads flat on a form. Some of the forms are shaped like baby chicks, children, dogs, dolphins, or rainbows. Other forms are just large circles or squares. The large forms allow the children to create their own designs.
I liked that the children could create their own projects. If they wanted a blue dog with glow in the dark spots, they could make one. If they wanted to spell out their names in fifteen different colors, they could do that too. Placing the beads took some patience. The plus to that was how nice and quiet the boys were while they placed beads.
One drawback to these beads was that little fingers had trouble not knocking over the already placed beads. The beads got messed up easily. A knock to the table, or a brush with an elbow could destroy a project. The beads do vacuum up easily, but you should be cautious with young children.
And while the kids could design their own projects, and place the beads, to finish the project you need a hot iron. The hot iron is of course an adult job. It also took a few times before I figured out exactly how to press the iron so that the beads didn’t shift and how long to leave the iron on the project so that the beads melted together but didn’t melt too much. We did figure out that parchment paper worked just as well as the ironing sheets sold with the beads. As an additional plus, it’s much less expensive.
Even though the boys have outgrown these, I’m going to keep a few boards and beads for snow days or sick days. If you have children over five you should give them a try.
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