If you love Perler Beads, this is a pretty easy craft that you'll love - and it's useful, too! It's a business cardholder for your office or desk that will also function as funky retro art. All you need to get going is some Perler Beads (remember those plastic beads you used to iron together as a kid? You can find these anywhere - at a craft store, or at the local Walmart), an iron, ironing paper that comes with the Perler Beads when you buy them, a plastic bead board, and some contact cement or sturdy glue. Here are a few quick steps and before you know it, you'll have something original and different to store those business cards!
Let your creative juices flow! You can choose whatever design or colour that suits you. I chose to create a retro square patterned cardholder with shades of brown, pink, blue, and gray.
Step 1: Create your design with the Perler Beads on the plastic bead board. The cardholder will consist of two larger sides, one piece for the bottom, and two pieces for the sides. The front and back should be around 24 beads across and 12 beads high; following these measurements, the bottom piece should have a 22 bead length with a 3 bead width, and the two side pieces should be 9 beads high by 3 beads wide.
Step 2: Ironing your beads together. Iron each individual piece together as you would with any other Perler Bead craft. Place the ironing paper over top of each separate piece and iron the beads until they melt together. Then, flip over the piece that you have just ironed and iron it on the opposite side. You should have five separate pieces (the front and back, the bottom, and two side pieces).
Step 3: The final step - gluing the parts together. I use a product called Contact Cement, which holds the beads together quite nicely. Most regular glues won't be sturdy enough to hold together plastic beads, so I recommend this product. It is pretty self-explanatory on how to glue these together: the longer bottom piece will go inbetween the front and the back, and there are two side pieces for the sides.
Now you should have a great cardholder for all of your business cards! Also great for scraps of paper that you might have lying around. If you don't feel like making one for yourself, I have the one from this tutorial up for sale in my Etsy shop, along with some other designs.
