My Crafty History

I grew up a crafty kid. My parents always encouraged my creativity by getting me little artsy kits for painting, sewing, building, et cetera. One day, Mom got me a Perler bead kit complete with fun colors and crazy animal pegboards. I LOVED that kit. I loved it so much, in fact, that every time my elementary school was cancelled for snow days, I would immediately grab that big bucket of beads and start making cute little flowers and monkeys while I watched the snow fall outside. It was the best!

Fast forward to my high school years where I hadn’t touched the beads since I was a kid. Enter Undertale — a new RPG-like indie video game that was taking the internet by storm. I was obsessed with Undertale and, as any crazy fan girl would do, I started looking up fan art. Boy, was I surprised when I discovered that people were using Perler beads to create the characters, an excellent choice for giving off that pixelated look. I realized I still had that big bucket of beads lying around and the idea struck me then and there that I could make the characters, too! Thus, my hobby was born!

Aaaaaand that’s it. I’ve been beading ever since. Oddly enough, this activity has helped to boost my confidence in a way. You see, I’m a perfectionist by nature, which means I scrutinize over every tiny detail being correct…especially in my projects. Looking back at it now, it was really annoying. I’d make project after project like it was nothing, but refused to iron anything because I was so afraid I would squash it (like Mom tended to do) and lose the integrity of the character. So it continued like that for a while.

Eventually, the day came when I finally plucked up the courage to iron my creations. While the first couple were a success, my overly cautious attitude made me impatient and, as you might expect, I ruined quite a few creations along the way. At first, this wounded me deeply as I had put so much love and so much of myself into what I had created, and to see it destroyed by my same hand was disappointing. As I continued to create, my ironing skills actually got better, so my success rate of evenly-ironed projects improved. I learned to love my failures and use them as motivation to keep trying.

These days, I make whatever I want whenever I can because college certainly keeps me busy. I’ve been using this quarantine as the perfect time to go through my old stuff I never ironed and do just that. I have a DeviantArt account showcasing my work, but I’m hoping to get an online shop set up soon to begin selling some of them. Now for some fun facts:

1. Fun Fact #1: I was in a musical production called “The Pajama Game” and I made and sold mementos out of Perler beads.
2. Fun Fact #2: So far, I’ve done one art commission and it was of the commissioner’s original character based on Dib from ‘Invader Zim’.
3. Fun Fact #3: I made a fan work for one of my favorite music YouTubers ‘TwosetViolin’ and they featured it on one of their videos!!

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