I Wanna Start Doing This!
I discovered this subreddit from a cross post from r/Pokemon and I wanna start doing this! Where can I get started? How much do these cost? I remember doing this in my little kid daycare, and I wanna do some sprites! I'm a big fan of Pokémon, and I like their sprites. This is the post that made me wanna do this: https://www.reddit.com/r/beadsprites/comments/bhltva/my_progress_on_the_gen_1_box_sprites_featuring_my/.
Where can I buy these, and how do I start?
Posted Apr 27, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC
Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed my post!
To get started I would recommend buying a set of pegboards (2 or 4) and a tray of assorted colors. That will only cost you $20-$25 and it's a good way to see if you enjoy the hobby before you start spending a lot. Those are links to perler.com, but I bought my first things at Target. Joann is the go-to place if you want to go to a physical store, but I personally use perler.com unless I only need a few colors. Michaels either stocks their own off brand of beads or doesn't stock beads at all, so I wouldn't recommend going there.
1,000 beads of a single color will cost $2 at perler.com (when you buy 6+ packs) and $3.50 at Joann. Perler has sales pretty often, like right now everything is 25% off. Joann also has coupons that are helpful, especially if you want to buy a 6k bag of beads.
Otherwise you'll need an iron and parchment paper. Any iron will do, mine cost $25. Parchment paper prevents the beads from sticking to the iron and costs ~$3.
I also invested in an organizer once I got a lot of colors, but people organize their beads a variety of different ways. Plastic water bottles are a common, cheap way to organize.
Feel free to ask any questions!