Biggie Perler Beads to Heart Earrings - Melt Things!

When most of us were kids we played with perler beads by placing them on a board and ironing them together. But perler beads have come a long way since then. Not only have people figured out how to make scrapbooking accents by melting perler beads, today I want to show you how to you can melt biggie perler beads to make heart shaped earrings.

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Meet Biggie Perler beads. Not only do they now have mini perler beads but they also have Biggie Perler beads. These are double the size of a regular perler bead.

To make these earrings you only need two to make one pair but they aren’t expensive and so far, my kids have used them to create many things. The other day our youngest used them to practice spelling her sight words and our middle child made necklaces for some of her friends.

You can also melt them without shaping them to form large circles. These can be used to make monogrammed earrings by placing a vinyl monogram over the flat circle or use them as accents on other projects.

But today since it’s close to Valentine’s Day, let’s use them to make heart earrings.

To start you’re simply going to stand up the Biggie Perler beads on an aluminum foil covered baking sheet or on a glass baking pan about 1 1/2 inches apart. As you can see, I did a lot of them in a variety of colors so I will have them on hand for other projects.

Place the baking sheet into an oven that has been preheated to 300 degrees.

Let’s take a minute and talk about the temperature and time to melt them.

These will melt at 300 degrees but in my oven, they took an hour and a half to melt. I later bumped up the oven to 315 degrees with my second batch (I’m a sucker for melting things) and they were done in an hour.

You know your oven and if it runs a little cool or with a little extra warmth. The first time you try these please know that you need to have two hours that you plan to be at home so you won’t feel rushed to get them melted.

After about 50 minutes, possibly more, your beads should look similar to the picture above. Most of your bead will be melted but there will be a small depression in the middle of the melted bead.

Now you’re ready to start shaping the beads into hearts.

These cool very quickly and you only have a short time to work before they start to cool and harden. If this happens, just push the tray back into the oven for a minute to warm it up again.

Use a metal object with a flat edge such as a letter opener or a flat knife.

First make the point of the heart simply by pushing the metal object into one side and then into the other until it comes to a point. You’re not cutting the melted bead, you just want to push the bottom half into a point.

Next go to the top of the bead and press the point of the metal object from the top of the melted perler bead in towards the middle. Again you’re just pushing it into a shape, not cutting or removing any melted perler bead. It’s best to go overboard when it comes to shaping it because it’s not the final step.

Once you’re done it might look rough and you might not like it yet.

Don’t worry! They’re not done.

Place the tray back into the oven and let the beads heat up for at least 10 minutes until they are a lovely rounded heart shape.

Any mistakes that you made shaping the perler bead should just melt away and leave behind a beautiful heart shape.

Once they look right to you, remove them from the oven and let them cool.