Project 5: SNES Coasters: Update (and Wrap Up?)

I may have missed the deadline by a few (many) months, but I have finally finished making my first batch of SNES Coasters.

The Pattern

After taking a look at a sprite sheet from Super Mario World. I opted for the exclamation point blocks. I did this for a few reasons. One, they were probably my favorite block in the game (if you can have favorite blocks), secondly they come in 4 colours (green, yellow, blue and red) so they have a little diversity in their appearance.

The Beading

They were also quiet easy to build, since they only require you to build the exclamation point and then fill in a field of colour before putting on a coloured border and a black outer border. After a little bit of work I figured out that the easiest way to create the exclamation mark is to put in the black beads for the upper left hand side of the border, then fill in the top rows of white beads. After that I add the bottom square of four white beads with the surrounding black boarder and finish the right hand side of black beads. Then I fill in the right hand side of field beads and rom top to bottom, then rotate the board and fill in the other side of the field. Finally I add the border of darker beads and the outer border of black beads.

I found it easiest to scoop a large number of beads into my one hand and then simply put them into the board one at a time with the other. You can use tweezers (including the ones that perler sells, which have a great scoop attached to them) or toothpicks to set the beads into the board, but I found that to be relatively unhelpful.

I also found from time to time that it was necessary to remove the cat from the pegboard before continuing...

The Ironing (is delicious)

Once the beads were in place and ready (and maybe had sat on my shelf for a few months?), it was time for fusing the beads. I set up an old chopping board on the ironing board as a surface to work on.

My setup

My iron is slightly difficult to calibrate since it measures in fabric quality, but I eventually found that the "wool" setting worked best for me. This gave me slightly more time than I had on the "cotton" setting. I  find that the beads can go from unmelted to melted quite quickly. Some people aim to totally melt the beads to get a more pixelly effect, but I actually like having the holes visible a little still, so it's a bit of an art to get the balance correct and will be a thing I need to learn with more practice.

I find I still tend to get more melting done on the right hand side of the sprite than on the left. I need to remember to rotate the sprites more frequently as I iron them. Some kind of lazy Susan would be useful. For me the beads melted in about 3 minutes, once I had pretty good fusion, I flipped them off of the board and switched the paper to the other side and continued ironing them for about 2 more minutes.

I started using the parchment paper that came packed in with the multi-pack of beads I purchased, but it was folded into about 4cm squares which left creases in the sprites. They recommend ironing the paper before beginning to remove that crease, but I wasn't able to. In the end I just picked a larger piece of paper to protect the beads and the iron.

The sprites tend to cup when they're finished, so I pressed them under a stack of books to help them stay straight. We can thank Alton Brown for keeping my coasters flat as well as all the things he's taught us about food. I kept the coasters in the bookpress for several days (but some of that also included time after they'd had the backing put on). I also put the coasters between sheets of parchment, just to make sure nothing transfered to the books, but I assume this was largely unnecessary.

The Backing

In order to both help the coasters stay together and to help keep them from scratching I added a felt backing. I opted for a thin stiffened felt with an adhesive back. I cut the backing into squares just smaller than the coasters and then trimmed the corners to ensure that the backing didn't stick out and ruin the look. I cut the squares using a hemming ruler for measurement and then trimmed the corners with the guide of a template.

It's important not to cut the backs too small or they'll cause the coasters to be tippy, and also provide less support to the beads.

The Finished Product

The final coasters.

So far they seem to have worked quite well. After they were pressed for several days they seemed to stay flat (the backing may have also helped with this). They are be a bit smaller than I'd like, they're great for bear bottles, but a little small for some mugs. It's possible on a later run that I'd add an extra ring of the darker coloured beads, but I haven't really seen what that's like yet. I've used them for one D & D session so far and they lived up to expectations.

I'm quite pleased with these and am now looking forward to tackling a few more projects. I'm feeling tempted to see if I can make sets of coasters on Etsy, but I haven't really started to look at whether that would really be a good idea or not. Beyond that I'm going to keep working on the coasters, both using Mario blocks and some other SNES Sprites that will make good coasters too.

And the coasters in use.