Beads!, Beads! and more Beads!

I had so much fun making my Perler bead snowflakes

I’ve watched for beads at thrifts and tag sales ever since.

You can only imagine how happy I was when I found this huge jar of what I’m guessing is about 8,000 beads at a tag sale!

Remembering how much I paid for the few white beads I bought for the snowflakes, I paid the little girl double the $1.00 she was asking. Unheardof!!

The bead projects I had in mind were little hearts that I could add to the snowflake tree for Valentine’s Day, and some flowers and butterflies come spring, – Cute idea, eh? –

but then I found more, at Sal’s. . .  a bucket of aprox. 5,000 Elmer’s Fuze Art beads,

with four pegboards and ten project cards, all for $3.99.

There was also a small Ziploc-ful tagged 99¢, an extravagance when compared to my other finds, but I couldn’t resist its many black and purple beads.

Then, since I was going right past on my way home, I stopped into Michaels to get yet another skein of the RHSS ‘Soft White’ that I’m collecting for the Watercolors blanket, 40% off with a coupon.

This particular Michael’s usually has caches of clearance-priced items scattered throughout the store, so I slowly sashayed up and down the aisles. Eventually I came upon a skein of Caron One Pound ‘Deep Violet’ to keep the ‘Soft White’ company. . . priced $3.49!

And, on the same shelf, a Perler Super Pegboard, (10″ x 14″) marked down from $9.99 to $5.99, which felt like getting to use a second 40% off coupon on the same day, a big No-No at Michael’s.

With a giant pegboard and a wealth of beads I started thinking about larger projects: creating bead mandalas, adapting cross-stitch and tapestry designs for coasters or tiles, melting beads into bowls or vases, or building a pixelated portrait. But why stop there? Why not reproduce a huge painting!?! While I thought about which I’d do first, I started to sort my bead treasury by color.

I soon realized that I need to get a few more of these wonderful little square containers. – Dollar Tree – 10 for a $1.00 –

because Elmer FuzeArt beads come in 31 colors!

Until then I can use muffin tins.

Turns out that the unmarked tag sale jar, which I suspect is Perler brand, held about forty colors.

WOW!! Depending on how much the two brands’ colors overlap, that’s potentially seventy different colors, and I have yet to open the little bag, not as wide a variety of colors as in the Biggest Box of Crayola Crayons, but I think it’ll do. . .  said as I gleefully go back to sorting my pretty little plastic beads.