I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for melt beads, often known by brand names Perler, Hama, Fuse, Melty, Nabbi & Pyssla beads. But after seeing a darling greeting card made with melt beads, that soft spot turned into a bit of an obsession. Their inherent pixilated, cartoon-y effect would be perfect for kiddos’ birthdays and baby shower cards, right?? Since realizing this, I’ve been binging on Pinterest ever since. In addition to finding hundreds of great ideas for such cards, I also found something mind blowing. Art. Like real, wall-hangable art made entirely outof melt beads. I just had to share my findings. Check these out….
This first one comes from Mattias Lind, a 21 year old melt bead artist from Sweeden. Mattias has a small gallery viewable on Instagram. Gorgeous.
This Marilyn Monroe portrait was created by Artistic Avenue. I couldn’t find any external links for their work.
It LOOKS like a rug, but it’s not. Its creation is accredited to Christina Puggaard.
This one looks like a cross between a rug and a board game board. The result is nothing less than stunning. To see more of the maker’s work visit @pyssel_och_perler on Pictaram.
This one puts a new twist on the whole deer head thing. It’s attributed to jennasylvie.
A perfect marriage here…a little Roy Lichtenstein in melt beads courtsey of caseylcarr.
This lovely creation is credited to dassommersprossenmaedchen.
If you’re as taken with these pieces as I am, you just might want to give the technique a try. To start you off, how about this pattern? It’s totally do-able for even a first timer. If deers aren’t your thing, think of any pixilated image (even cross-stitch) could be replicated using melt beads. OR you you make your own pattern using graph paper OR using a free pixel art maker.
BUT, before you dive in, you MUST read this post describing the difference between Perler, Hama, Fuse, Melty, Nabbi, and Pyssla brand beads, because all brands of melt beads are not created equally.
