Just made some more bead art. I had to make some Mega Man ones. I think MM6 gets a lot of hate, but I love it, so I decided to go with something from that one. Rush was also a fun one to make. I also wanted to make a Mario one; how can you not like Kuribo's Shoe?  Check my first post for all the pics so far.

As for my next project, it is well underway. I hope it's not too ambitious; it's gonna be a LOT of work. It will completely dwarf all of the other ones I've done so far.

Wow, my current project may take longer than I had originally thought.........

^ funny you updated this. i just got done with half of a HUGE project and now i need to order more beads

Where do you get these beads at? I would love to try this as well.

^^ A craft store like Michael's carries them. However, at those stores, I could only find the tubs of mixed colors. It was easier to find the colors I needed online and order the them individually. That way I didn't have 500 transparent green beads that never get used.

This chick is the best place I've found...or rather Dr.Robbie told me about:

http://stores.ebay.com/BakersKids...

I get my stuff from here:

http://www.koolstuff4kids.com/ind...

Actually, my local Jo Ann Fabrics has individual colors in packs of 1000 now. Sweet!! To anyone starting out, buy lots of black beads. You will burn through them since so many NES characters had black outlines.

Sheesh, this project is huge. It's taking up about 3/4 of my dinner table. I have to order more beads and more pegboards since I bought all the boards the store had.

Pegboards? You mean theres something actually holding these beads together?

you intially place the beads on a peg board. then you melt the beads together and they become self sustaining. then you can reuse the board.

nothingface - you really shouldn't need that many boards. you can always melt a section. melt another section. and then melt them together. before i invested in some bigger boards, i only used the tiny board (like 13x13) and completed a bunch of huge projects. it is much easier with bigger/more boards, but not always cost effective.

Just chiming in to say...awesome work! I'm not very crafty myself but I respect that you can put your vision out there in art like that. I made a space invader out of empty red bull cans and a hot glue gun but it eventually toppled under its own weight. I now have about 215 red bull cans here at the office and I don't know what to do with them next!

So I guess super glue won't do the trick with these beads?

That slime is so cute! Good job in general, but I really love that slime. Maybe it's time for me to pick up on some crochet skills.

that'd be a lot of super glue . melting them really isn't that hard. you just iron them and they will stay together. i wrote an ezine article on it at some point (it was called "the art of bead art"). it would explain everything you would need to know / do if you're interested. it's really pretty simple (seriously, little kids do it all the time)

I've seen a few crochet Sockboys that were pretty kick ass.

I had considered reusing the same boards and ironing this thing in sections, but I'm afraid of either them warping funny or ironing them too much when putting them all together.  What do you recommend?  I already have the boards on the way, so I guess I'm going to finish it that way, but I'm paranoid about bumping the table in the meantime!

Finally, all the beads are in place for my major project. All I have to do now is iron it all together. I'll be out of town until tomorrow evening, so I will have pics posted once it's all together. I'm taking some "before" pics in case I destroy it in the process.

OK friends, my big project is complete. Approximately 5000 beads, 15+ hours, and $50.00 went into this thing. Hope you like Dragon Warrior II:

Awesome work, that is a thing of beauty.

I still have to try this, was going to go pick some stuff up this week. Does anyone have a good how to site?

Your project looks awesome buddy! Very nice job. For using just one board, or a few, I do a thing I call "seaming." What I do is melt one board's worth of beads only on one side and very lightly (just so they stick together). I then do this again with another section. Next, I line up the pieces on the board where they need to be seamed. I melt them together very lightly. I then flip the whole piece together and melt it altogether. Flip it over, and finish melting the original half. It sounds complicated, but it's quite simple and works really well. I seamed this piece in two huge sections and it worked very well. you really can't tell if you take your time and do it well. saves a ton of $$$ on boards if you plan on doing bigger projects - like big logos, bigger characters, or a level in a game or something.




I wrote an ezine article on it. Vol 3 Issue 10 in November, 2009. You can see it here: http://nintendoage.com/index.cfm?...
Very simple and makes awesome decoration.


$50$!$!$!$! Where are you buying your beads? Ebay seller callahan13 sells them in lots of 10K where you get to choose the colors and costs about $25, and better deals for more. Definitely recommend buying them from her or in other big lots with like black and white.

can you dig up that ezine article or tell me which issue its in so i can download it?

see post directly above you

It probably wasn't $50.00 dollars. The boards weren't cheap, but I had most of them anyways. It was probably like $20 or $30; I did have some stuff shipped from Perler's website. Their shipping is really high.