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I’m getting back in to beadspriting. Why did I ever give up on it?
Oh yeah. I remember.
These mother fuckers.
Mix fucking buckets. Don’t ever buy these. I know they are oh so much cheaper than buying the 1000 packs. That’s how they lured me in. No matter where you buy them, the mix buckets come out to less than half the price of the 1000 bags. Less than a third, sometimes. So when I got (back) into Perler beads, I bought some buckets.
First I figured I’d just grab what I needed out of the bucket. Why bother to separate them, I figured. Well, I quickly realized that perler beads have the ability to run away from you. If you go for a certain bead, it’s going to burrow deep into the bucket. You have to not look directly at any specific bead, swoop in quickly and grab one at random. That’s not going to work unless the colors are seperated.
So then I figured, I can go online and look up the colors that are inside, and separate them. Well, Perler does not even list nor keep track of what is in the different mix buckets. Okay, I’ll do it without a list, I thought. So I’d pick up a bead and go: Is this one pink, or light pink? I think it’s light pink. Wait, no, this one’s lighter. THIS is light pink. Then my husband would point out that I’ve actually been putting two different yellows together for the past hour or some such. He can see more hues than I can.
Finally I got a bit of them separated… But there was only a few beads of each color that I actually wanted to use.
So making anything with the beads or preparing to make anything with the beads became nothing but frustration. My perler beads sat on the kitchen counter for months, and became buried under other stuff.
It’s not worth the savings if you want to throw all the beads out the window and end up not making anything. Just buy the single color 1000 packs. Although they are more expensive overall, they are only about $3 a pack at a craft store (and take your coupons to make them even less!) so if you don’t have a bunch of money to drop on them all at once, you can pick up one or two whenever you have a few bucks.
Since I decided there’s no reason to do things I don’t really want to do, when I can just do it enjoyably instead – I decided, why continue telling myself to sort those mix buckets? Instead, every time I go past a craft store and have a few bucks in my pocket, I’m grabbing a pack or two of 1000 single color. Using perler beads has become enjoyable. Like it’s suppose to be.
I’m trying to do at least one beadsprite a day. This is only the 3rd day I’ve been doing this, so I don’t have much to show yet. But what I do have is SO much better than the pitiful Pokeball I had to make in pink back in… jeebus. May of 2012. Those fucking mix buckets put me off it for that long.
Well, screw you, mix buckets. I’m having fun and getting better at it now.