Arts and crafts are supposed to be relaxing and fun pastimes. So when a friend of mine decided to bring her Perler bead set to campus one day, I jumped at the chance to try it out.
Perler beads are small plastic beads that are fused together with an iron to create a wide variety of interesting patterns. It’s a popular craft that people use to make designs ranging from portraits of celebrities to characters from video games. Some people even sell their finished products as merchandise.
It was an innocent idea. I usually spend my time drawing and painting anyway, so I thought it would a good change of pace. It wasn't like I hadn't done it before, either. My first exposure to Perler bead crafts was back in elementary school. Then there was a time in high school that I remember making a few Perler bead key chains as a club activity. Everything went smoothly, and it was a great experience. What was the harm in doing it again?
I settled on an 8-bit pattern of Sailor Pluto from the iconic "Sailor Moon" franchise that I found while sifting through Google Images and went to work.
Things were good in the beginning. The beads fell into place just fine, and the image was slowly coming together. It wasn't until I was about a third of the way through that things took a turn for the worse.
Now, I can be a patient person when the time calls for it. But there’s something about Perler beads that really stretches my patience thin. Maybe it was simply how I had to put one bead at a time onto the pegboard. Or it could be how easy it was to lose your place on the design. Or it could have even been my trypanophobia (for those of you who may not know, it’s a fear of holes or pattern of holes) kicking in.
Whatever the reason, it was the cause of turning a supposedly fun day into a complete bloodbath.
My eyes starting straining from the endless patterns of circles and— I shudder at the thought— the holes. My mind was suddenly hyperconscious of how I constantly had to dig and pick out the next color I needed from the tray. I kept losing track of how many rows and columns I needed to match up with my reference picture. My hands were fumbling with inserting the tiny plastic beads into the narrow spaces of the pegboard. And dang it, did I just drop another bead?
With exasperation building up in my chest, I asked my friend for anything that could help make it easier to put the beads down. When she said that she had a pair of tweezers stashed in her bag, I was ecstatic. Never had I felt so happy for the existence of tweezers. I waited with unabashed glee as she tried to fish them out from her backpack. But life is never that easy.
“Uh, Ivy,” she gave me an apologetic look, “I don’t think I have them with me.”
It felt like I won the lottery, but the clerk behind the counter did a double take, informing me that I had actually lost instead. How dare you raise my hopes up like that, only to shatter them into a million pieces. How dare you.
Begrudgingly, I pressed onwards. Because after all the hardships that Sailor Pluto had to endure, she deserved a happy ending! I was determined to pour blood, sweat, and tears into making sure that I finished her design. Thinking back on it now, it was naïve of me to think that.
It would be a good hour until I had calmed down enough to just to place the final bead down and complete it. Finally, I could iron the whole thing and be done with it.
At that point, my patience had been whittled from the mentally exhausting task. As I waited for the iron melt the beads together, a wicked whisper ghosted over my ear. Curiosity took hold of me, and I lifted the wax paper prematurely.
I regretted everything.
Beads from her outfit fell out place. Chunks of partially fused beads that made up her hair and face shifted over. Just like that, Sailor Pluto was maimed and disfigured, all thanks to my audacity to sneak a peek at how things were looking.
It took a while for me to stop screaming bloody murder, both externally at the unfairness of the world and internally at my own incompetence. The tears that my heart shed were as salty as the slices of spam that I had eaten for breakfast.
I desperately scrounged around for the remaining bits of my willpower from the depths of my devastated soul. My pride wasn’t going to let me walk away from the disaster area without doing some damage control.
It was okay. I could do this. I could fix this.
It was a fair amount of time before I could reposition everything again to the best of my ability. This time, I paused before laying the wax paper down again. My confidence in my ironing skills took a major hit, and there was no way I was willing to mess up again. I called my friend over to take over for me.
When we noticed that the beads were not fusing as fast as expected, we carefully removed the iron from the beads to figure out what went wrong this time. Then, by some terrible stroke of bad luck, the desk we were working on shook slightly, making the some of the beads jump. Our synchronized shrieks of surprise pierced through the silence of the room as we scrambled to do emergency care.
By the end of it all, Sailor Pluto managed to survive the nightmare, but not without her own set of scars. The searing heat from the iron left an extensive amount of melting on her face and hair, our haste to remove the paper left some residue on her surface, and there was a gaping hole in her hair where a single bead had somehow come out of place during the chaos.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” my friend said somberly. I couldn’t help but agree.
Perhaps it just wasn’t the right place or the right time. Maybe I don’t have the capacity to make complex Perler bead designs.
Will I give up on making more Perler bead crafts? After this catastrophe, I am inclined to do so. As bitter as that three-hour ordeal was, I don’t feel completely defeated. There’s something else bubbling up from the ashes of my withered pride.
Redemption. Redemption for Pluto and for myself.
This won’t be the last leg of my Perler bead journey. Watch yourself, Perler beads. The next time around will turn out perfect.
