Cooking with Perla beads

I have a bit of a soft spot for brightly coloured plastic  so when I came across this hacked Perla bead bowl on Pinterest I was keen to give it a go. There are few few varying instructions across the internet, the ones on Pinterest were in Danish (I think) and so were not much help but I managed to get the basics together from a couple of sources.

Perla beads are normally pegged out on a little plastic grid or board into pretty pictures, shapes or patterns,  then you cover your picture with greaseproof paper and an iron it to melt the beads together For these large projects you need the oven set at 250 degrees Celsius, some grease proof paper, cooking oil spray and your moulds. 

You can basically melt this stuff into anything you like, here Ada and I started with something easy like coasters. I used some small pie tins I in the cupboard that were the right size as the moulds. We preheated our oven and sprayed the moulds lightly with oil. I had to play around a bit and it took a couple of tries, but we finally worked out that for best results you need to fill you moulds about two bead layers thick. Once our moulds were filled we popped them in the oven for roughly 4 minutes, you have to watch them very closely so they don't over melt or burn. When the beads had melted enough to be soft but still hold their shape a little we took them out of the oven. I used a sixth pie tin to gently press the surface of each coaster so it was nice and even. Once they were cool enough to handle we popped them out of their tins using a butter knife, gave them a wash in hot soapy water and viola! Perla bead coasters. Next up we're going to try and make a bangle and some little buttons to stick on hair clips, Fun Times!