Welcome back friends! We bought a new refrigerator some time ago and I’ve been thinking it would be nice to decorate it with some Super Mario Bros. magnets! Also, March 10th is Mario Day!
Working with a limited amount of black and white perler beads, I chose a handful of characters / objects from Super Mario World to begin with, and more to come! I created (and the pictures of the patterns are included below) for small Mario, small Luigi, a coin, Yoshi’s egg and Yoshi.
The magnets turned out great! I left them a little less melted on outward facing side because I like the look, but you are always welcome to melt them more! Be careful with the iron, but don’t be afraid to make some mistakes! Mistakes happen for everyone, you may see two pieces of my Mario’s mustache that were over-melted from an unevenly heated iron, but if it’s not worth scrapping the whole piece, embrace it!
Let’s get started!
SUPPLIES
- Fuse beads
- Fuse bead pegboard
- Parchment paper
- Point tweezers (optional)
- Painter’s tape
- Seam ripper
- Iron
- Iron-safe surface
- Peel and stick magnet discs
INSTRUCTIONS
- If your beads did not come pre-sorted by color, sort them into the colors you need per character and/or object.
- Coin: 50 black, 25 white, 17 light brown, 27 bright yellow, 41 gold yellow.
- Luigi: 63 black, 29 white, 19 bright green, 39 light brown, 18 dark brown, 5 lighter blue, 17 blue, 12 darker blue, 20 lighter tan, 17 golden tan, 2 bright yellow.
- Mario: 63 black, 29 white, 19 bright red, 39 light brown, 18 dark brown, 5 lighter blue, 17 blue, 12 darker blue, 20 lighter tan, 17 golden tan, 2 bright yellow.
- Yoshi’s egg: 40 black, 70 white, 19 darker green, 29 lighter green, 8 bright green.
- Yoshi: 146 black, 63 white, 23 gold yellow, 20 bright red, 34 darker green, 54 bright green.
- On your pegboard, begin laying out the appropriate colored beads for the character(s) and/or object(s) you’ve chosen. I recommend working on one character/object at a time, then moving on to the next.
- If you are having a hard time placing beads into specific places, use pointed tweezers to pick up each bead and then insert it.
- Once each character has been completed, take strips of painter’s tape and cover that character, slightly layering each piece of tape so it’s one connected piece.
- Take a seam ripper (or other sharp pointed tool) and poke a small hole into the center of each fuse bead in the pattern. This allows built up heat to escape the tape when ironing.
- Carefully remove the taped pattern from the peg board and place it tape-side down on an iron-safe surface. Then place parchment, wax, or ironing paper over it.
- Heat a dry iron to a medium heat and as smoothly and evenly as you can, begin to iron the project in a circular motion. Do not press down. Beads take about 10 to 20 seconds per side to fuse evenly and some colors may fuse more quickly than others.
- When the beads begin to fuse together you’ll see their colors more clearly through the paper and the center holes will shrink to a pinhole size. Lift the paper occasionally to see how the beads are fusing.
- Let the design cool, placing a flat and heavy object over it to keep it from curling.
- Remove the weight and paper and flip the project over. Peel off the tape and place the paper back on this side of the project.
- Repeat step 7 through 9 on this side of the project. I chose to only lightly fuse the beads on this side because I prefer the look, but you are welcome to melt them more!
- Remove the weight and paper and flip the project over.
- Peel the back-liner off a magnet and attach it to the back of your project. For the smaller objects like the coin and egg, I used one magnet. For Mario and Luigi I used two, spread evenly. And for Yoshi, I used three magnets, spread evenly!
- Stick to you refrigerator or other magnetic surface and enjoy!
Whole Heartily 