Choosing a project

The ideas are endless on what can be made.  Dragon does her own thing with no patterns.  Sticks uses some of the pattern books to make his projects and he also uses the IPad.  Id has an IPhone and I have an ITouch so I'm sure at times we look silly sitting at the table with our devices and the beads.

You can find a lot of free patterns on the Perler Bead Website.  We generally don't use those patterns because they aren't our style, but I'm sure Sticks would use them if we didn't have the books readily available.  Also, any cross-stitch pattern can easily be adapted to beads.

Assorted projects that Sticks and Dragon made

Another way to create a project is find an 8-bit picture and make it into beads.  They even have 8-bit picture converters that will turn any regular picture into an 8-pit image.  We have never used a converter, but maybe we will in the future, who knows.  Beading this way is a little more time consuming than having a pattern, but easier than looking at a regular photo and deciding on how to make it look good in bead form.  This way is even more time consuming.  I made the monster High logo by just looking at a regular photo of it and I'm not sure if I'm completely in love with the end result.

We purchased the Bead It! app for the ipad.  You're supposed to choose any photo, add it to the program, and it will generate a pattern and let you know exactly what colors are needed for making it.  I haven't used it to actually make any patterns because the colors sometimes look odd to me, but I may eventually use it and tweak the pattern to suit my needs better.  Their are other apps out there and we may try a different one down the road.

Image used

pattern in program

list of how many of each color needed

Lastly, what we generally do, is copy other people's creations.  You can easily make your our own adjustments to make it your own.  The internet has tons and tons of images of completed projects out there.  If the image is clear and at the right angle you can count the beads and make one of your own.  Unfortunately I'm not able to credit the actual creators since I don't know who they are or where they first originated from.