DIY "JOY" Christmas garland using perler beads

Well, its only two more days to go and then everyone will be ready to decorate your home for holidays.Today I am going to showing you an easy way to make a perler beads christmas garland.You  can put together this garland in minutes or teach your kids to make them so that they take do these while you are putting up the christmas decorations. Let's see how. 

Materials Required :

Perler bead peg board in round and square shape

Perler beads in christmas colors

Ironing paper or parchment paper

Iron

Ribbon or any kind of thread

Pom-pom(Optional)

Hot glue gun

Needle (Optional)

Step 1: Take the round peg board and arrange the beads in the shape you desire. I went with ornament shape. You can also use square peg board to make circle shape of the ornament however the edges will give pixelated look and not smooth as you do with round peg board. To make the ornament shape, I used 13 beads as diameter of a single ornament. 

Step 2: Once you have arranged the beads in the shape you want, cover it with ironing paper. Usually the beads comes with the ironing paper if not you can use parchment paper or wax paper. Iron on the top of the ironing paper in circular motion until you see all the beads melted . Don't try to lift the paper when you are in the middle of the ironing process to check if the beads has melted. The beads may get distorted and you have to assemble the beads again. Nobody wants to do that, right? You can very well see whether the beads have melted without removing the ironing paper.(see the second picture below).

Step 3: Allow it to rest for sometime and remove the ironing paper. You can stop here or you can repeat the same steps to the other side too. I did not want to repeat the steps as I loved how the non-ironed side looked(second picture) so I went with that. Repeat the same steps to make two more ornaments. 

Step 4: Now take the square peg board and arrange the letters using white perler beads.I decided to go with the word "JOY". Repeat the ironing process as you did in the previous steps to melt the beads. 

Step 5: Now attach the letters to the ornaments using hot glue.

Step 6: Take ribbon or any thread and glue the ornaments to them. I wanted add some white pom pom's in between to give the white snow look so I used needle at the end of the ribbon to add the pom pom then glue the ornament ,then add the pom pom's and so on.But you can directly just glue the ornaments alone and complete the garland. It's up to you.Isn't that so easy?

 So why do you need needle when you can just hot glue the pom pom? Well when you hot glue the pom pom on the the thread or ribbon it kind of looks ugly with glue showing outwards and pom pom's rolling all over the way you don't want. So it is better to attach them this way. Your perler bead "JOY" garland is now complete and ready to decorate your home . 

What do you think ? This is such a easy craft to make and there are endless possibilities to do them. Personalize them in the way you want. You can even spell" Merry Christmas" or any other christmas themed words to suit you theme decoration. Use different colors to match your decor instead of traditional christmas colors. You can make them in shape of santa hat or christmas tree and spell the words on the top.If you are doing this garland, in what shape and colors will you make? Share with me in the comments below. As always I will be happy to hear from you.