Wednesday, September 3, 2014

There have been quite a number of items posted on pinterest about making your own enamel dots.  After reading different versions, I decided on baking perler beads.  Perler beads are a children's craft item and can be found at Walmart (although I have a healthy aversion to shopping there), Michael's, and various online sites.  I bought a small set I found on clearance that had three colors of blue, two shades of yellow and an orange in the set.


I found that the hardest part was snipping the little devils in half so as to get a smaller enamel dot.  But even with my RA, it was very do-able (even if I did have to chase a few that launched themselves right off the end of the scissors and shot across the room--much to the surprise of the cat).  I stacked a few of them to get a larger size, left some as they were and cut a bunch down. 


Since I didn't have any parchment paper to bake them on, I used my Teflon craft sheet (folded in half to fit it on my baking sheet (I used an old baking sheet though--just in case).  Set the oven to 300 degrees and the timer to 15 minutes.


Just like baking cookies, the length of baking time will differ depending on your oven, how many beads you have on a baking sheet and how many are stacked.  The good news is, even if I did leave them in longer to melt the double stacked ones more--the smaller ones did not seem to burn.  There was no noxious odor and no residue left on my Teflon craft mat. 

 And this is what the blue ones looked like after baking...


Pretty easy... I'll probably make more... now the hardest thing will be to decide what colors to do next. 

Of course I hade to use a couple on a layout right away...  Papers are from Dear Lizzy, the Lucky Charm collection as well as the noted sticker and the little hearts sticker in the middle of the doily.  Kind-a don't remember where the "Special" die dut came from--it was laying in one of the little dishes on my desk, a leftover or cast-off from another page.  The "Life is Sweet" sticker came from Jillibean Soup and the fabric yo-yo's were part of a $.99 pack of nine of them... Two received a decorative fabric covered brad through the center and the third one got a white flower shaped button to cover the center.   Title letters are Thickers, but they were too, too yellow; so I dabbed on some Picket Fence white distress stain to tone the yellow down, and that worked quite nicely.  A piece or two of black striped washi tape and my own homemade enamel dots finished the page. 

So, what colors are next?  Could use some red, black, gray, pink of course, light green, bright green, dark green, brown, oh white too...

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