Fuse Beads

When I was a kid I loved making things with fuse beads, so when I saw a cheap set at Ikea I knew I wanted to do this with our kids.

If you have never done this before (like my wonderful husband), it seems really simple. You simply take tiny beads and place them on these plates that have little things sticking up. That's not a great description, but it's the best I can do. Once you have filled your plate, you place a sheet of specialty paper on top and iron the beads together. This makes a something the size of a coaster. The kit I bought came with 4 plates - large square, small square, circle, and heart.

We spent a long time working on this. I'm making a square with various colored stripes. Sweet daughter is working on the circle doing one line at a time and then going around the outside. Sweet son just randomly places the beads anywhere he can.

The most difficult part is if you just barely bump it, many of the beads will fall off. This takes a steady hand and an amazing amount of patience. This ended up lasting about 40 minutes for sweet son and over an hour for sweet daughter. Not bad for two year olds.