How to Make Perler Beads (Step-by-Step for Beginners)

Mini 2.6 mm · Midi 5 mm · Maxi 10 mm

Fuse beads come in three sizes. The pattern stays the same, one bead per square, but the finished piece does not: every bead is one peg-width across, so a design is its width in beads times the bead size.

Start with midi. Minis (2.6 mm; Hama’s are 2.5 mm) need tweezers and a steady hand. Maxis (10 mm) are sold for small children. Each size has its own pegboards, so you cannot mix sizes on one board.

Work out the size before you buy. A full 29 × 29 square in midi beads is 14.5 cm (5.7 in) across and takes up to 841 beads, about the size of a coaster. Four linked squares, 58 × 58, make a 29 cm (11.4 in) piece of up to 3,364 beads.

Square 29 × 29 · Center peg · Clear boards

A pegboard holds each bead upright on its own peg, so the beads line up in a grid. Put it on a flat, hard surface, never on your lap or a cushion: a board that flexes makes beads jump off their pegs.

Clear pegboards are the trick most beginners miss. Print the pattern at actual size, one square per peg (5 mm for midi beads), and slide it under the board. Each peg then sits on its own color, and you place beads by matching what you see instead of counting.

• Square boards link: Most large squares clip or slot together edge to edge, so four of them make a 58 × 58 surface. Line the pegs up across each join before you place anything.
• Shaped boards: Circles, hexagons, hearts and stars give you a shape without planning one, which is handy for coasters and ornaments. A square board and a pattern can make any of those shapes too.
• Keep boards cool: Boards are plastic. Too much heat for too long warps them, and a warped board no longer holds beads straight. That is one more reason to iron in short passes.

For a symmetric design, start at the center and work outwards. For anything else, start at a corner and count pegs from the edge, the same way you count squares on the pattern.

Small · Few colors · Bold outline

A first project should teach you the craft, not test your patience. Three things make a design easy: it is small, it uses few colors, and those colors come in blocks rather than as single beads.

• A few hundred beads at most: The heart is 74 beads and the strawberry 161. That is long enough to learn and short enough to finish in one sitting.
• Two to five colors: Every color means another bowl, another pick-up and another chance to grab the wrong one.
• A bold outline: An outline gives every area an edge to place against, and it hides small slips along the edges.
• Few lone beads: A single bead of one color surrounded by another is the easiest to misplace and the hardest to spot. The sunset has 18; the heart has none.

A photo is what most people want to make first, and it is the most likely to disappoint: many colors, soft edges, and single beads scattered through every area. Make one once placing and ironing are second nature; the photo to pattern converter does the conversion for you. Until then, the beginner patterns are a good place to start.

Grid · Codes · Every 5 and 10

A pattern is a grid with one square per bead. Each color has a code (P05 is Perler Red), and the key beside the grid lists every code and how many beads it takes. Printed charts draw a heavier line every 5 squares and a heavier one again every 10, so you can count in fives instead of ones.

Keep your place with a ruler or a strip of paper under the row you are on. With a clear board over the chart you barely need to count at all, but you still need the key to know which bottle P59 is.

Codes belong to a brand. A Perler pattern lists Perler codes (P…) and a Hama pattern lists Hama codes (H…), and the same number is not the same color in another brand. Lesson 14 has the nearest match across brands.

Materials list · 10% spare

Before you place a single bead, count how many of each color the design takes. Running out of red three rows from the end is the most avoidable way to stall a project.

• One color per bowl: Shallow bowls, an egg carton or an ice-cube tray all work.
• In the order of the key: Line the bowls up in the order the key lists them, so the code on the chart and the bowl in front of you match at a glance.
• Similar shades apart: Red and Cranapple, White and Pastel Yellow, Black and Dark Grey are easy to confuse under indoor light. Keep them at opposite ends of the tray.

You do not have to count by hand. MakeBead’s converter and designer print this list with every pattern, per color and in total.

Row by row · One color at a time · Outline first

There are three ways to fill a board, and they end in the same picture. What differs is how often you change color, because every change means a new bowl and another chance to pick the wrong one. Press play to watch each.

For most designs, start with the outline, then place the small details, and leave the big single-color areas until last: they fill in around what is already there, and they are the least likely to go wrong.

• Push each bead all the way down: A bead that sits high on its peg tips over when the paper goes on.
• Tweezers for tight spots: Between placed beads there is no room for fingers, but tweezers go straight down.
• Hold the board steady: Keep a hand on it, or work on a tray you can turn. Beads sit loose until they are ironed.
• Good light: Close shades separate in daylight or under a white lamp and blur together under warm evening light.

If a bead lands on the wrong peg, lift it straight up with tweezers. Pulling it sideways drags its neighbors off their pegs.

Missing · Wrong · Shifted · Tipped

Once a piece is ironed, a mistake stays: fused beads cannot be popped off and used again. Before the paper goes on, compare the board with the pattern one row at a time, then look across it from a low angle. A bead that is not standing on its peg shows up as a bump.

Missing and wrong beads are fixed by placing or swapping one bead. For a shifted bead, check the rest of its row too; if one bead is a peg out, the beads next to it often are as well.

Light · Medium · Full

Ironing softens the plastic. Each bead spreads into its neighbors and its hole starts to close. How far you let that go decides how the piece looks and how strong it is, and it is a choice, not a mistake. Drag the slider.

• Light: The holes are still round and the beads are joined only where they touch. This is the classic textured look. The piece bends and can snap along a row, so it suits wall art and ornaments better than things that get handled.
• Medium: The holes are about half closed and every bead is joined to its neighbors. It is strong enough for keychains and magnets and still looks like beads. Most patterns assume this finish.
• Full: The holes are closed and the surface is flat. It is the strongest finish and the one for coasters, which have to take hot mugs and wiping. The bead texture is gone.

Both sides need ironing. The side facing the iron melts; the side against the pegboard stays as it was until you flip the piece over (lesson 10).

Decide on the finish before you start, and look under the paper every few seconds. You can always iron a little more, but you cannot iron less.

Paper · Circles · Cool · Flip

With the board checked and the finish decided, ironing takes a few minutes. Click a step to see it.

Iron settings

• Heat: Medium: two dots (••) on most irons, the wool setting. On an iron you do not know, start lower and turn it up only if nothing happens after 20 seconds.
• Steam: Off. Empty the water tank if you can: steam spits water through the paper and leaves spots.
• Pressure: Light. Let the heat do the work; pressing hard pushes soft plastic sideways and squashes the design.
• Paper: Ironing paper or baking parchment. Reuse it until it wrinkles, because wrinkles print into the soft plastic.

Edges and corners fuse last. Circles tend to spend less time there, and the outer beads have fewer neighbors to join. When the middle is done and the edges are not, give the edges a few more passes instead of ironing the whole piece again.

If a board is large, or shaped and prone to warping, the tape method in lesson 13 lets you iron without heating the board at all.

Under a book

A freshly ironed piece is still soft. Plastic shrinks as it cools, and when one side is hotter than the other it shrinks unevenly and pulls the edges up.

So after the second side, put the warm piece, paper still on, under something flat and heavy, such as a big book or a baking tray with a pan on top. Leave it until it is cold to the touch. A piece that curled anyway can be flattened by warming it briefly with the iron and cooling it under the book again.

Loose · Flat · Uneven · Curled

Nearly every ironing problem is one of four. Pick a symptom to see what it looks like, why it happens and what to do about it.

• Beads stick to the paper: It was peeled while hot. Let the piece cool for a minute before lifting the paper, and peel slowly from one corner.
• Beads fly off when the paper goes on: The paper was slid on, or it moved under the iron. Lower it straight down and start ironing in the middle, so the paper is held in place from there outwards.
• The piece is stuck to the pegboard: The first side was ironed so hard that plastic flowed down around the pegs. Let it cool completely, then flex the board gently and ease the piece off. Iron less next time.

Linked boards · The tape method

A design wider or taller than 29 beads needs more than one large square board. Link the boards before you start, place across the joins as if they were one board, and iron the whole piece together so it fuses as one.

Ironing paper may need to overlap on a big piece: overlap the sheets by a few centimetres and iron across the join. Fuse the whole piece before you try to lift it, since a large piece that is only partly fused bends and cracks when picked up by a corner.

The tape method

For big pieces, many people take the design off the board on tape and iron it there, so the board never gets hot:

1. Cover the placed beads with overlapping strips of wide masking tape and press every bead firmly onto it.
2. Lift the tape slowly. The beads come off the pegs stuck to it, still in place. Lay it tape side down on a heat-proof surface.
3. Iron the exposed side under paper and let it cool.
4. Peel off the tape, turn the piece over and iron the second side the same way.

Same size · Different codes

Perler (USA), Hama (Denmark), and Artkal and MARD (China) all make 5 mm midi beads that fit the same pegboards. They differ in their color ranges and their codes, and a little in how they melt: brands soften at slightly different rates, so iron a piece that mixes brands slowly and look often.

The page Perler vs Hama vs Artkal compares the three in detail.

Codes and colors are what each brand publishes; check a real bead before buying a lot of one.

Keychains · 3D · Coasters · Your own

Once a flat piece comes out right, the same three steps (place, iron, cool) make everything else.

• Keychains and charms: Leave a hole near the top for a jump ring. The keychain guide shows three ways.
• 3D pieces: Flat pieces that slot together into boxes, animals and ornaments. See 3D Perler beads.
• Coasters and magnets: Coasters need a full melt on both sides; magnets a medium melt, with a magnet glued to the back.
• Without an iron: An oven, a heat press or a heat gun also work, each with its own catches. See other ways to melt Perler beads.
• Your own design: Draw one in the bead designer, or turn a photo into a pattern with the converter. Both give you a printable pattern and the materials list.

15 × 15 pegboard

Pick a color and click pegs to place beads; click a bead again with the same color to lift it off. Then drag “Iron” to see how your design looks at each finish.

Then clear the board and place the heart from lesson 4 from memory, and after that the same heart one bead smaller. Small designs show how much a single bead changes.

Words you will meet

Fuse beads

The general name. Perler, Hama, Artkal and MARD are brands.

Pegboard

The plastic board with pegs the beads stand on.

Ironing paper

The heat-proof sheet between the iron and the beads.

Midi, mini, maxi

Beads of 5 mm, about 2.6 mm and 10 mm.

Pattern, chart

The grid of colors you place from.

Key, legend

The list of codes and counts beside a pattern.

Light fuse, full melt

Ironed with the holes open, and with the holes closed.

Tape method

Lifting a design off the board on masking tape to iron it.

Frequently asked questions