3-D Fuse Bead Deer Ornament

When you create separate pieces out of fuse beads, you can glue them together to make a 3-D ornament! 

This project is great for kids 6+ to complete with a bit of help from care givers, but younger kids can also help by counting and sorting beads by colour, and reading the template. Kids will develop fine motor skills, counting and numeracy skills and colour recognition skills with this project.

What you need:

• fuse beads, a.k.a. Perler beads or Hama beads (169 background colour, 78 brown, 55 dark brown, 10 peach, 1 black)
• peg boards (we used a square board 14 pegs wide, and a hexagonal board 15 pegs across at its widest points)
• iron
• parchment paper
• hot glue gun and glue
• pipe cleaner or ribbon

How to make a 3-D fuse bead deer:

1. Using the templates below, create the background and head for your deer. We used a variety of green beads for our background piece, but you can use any colours you like. Once you have the beads on the peg boards, cover your pieces with a piece of parchment paper and iron in circles with a warm, dry iron for approximately 20 seconds or until the beads are fused together (refer to instructions included with your beads). Allow to cool before handling. Flip your fused piece over, and complete the same ironing process on the other side. Again, allow to cool before handling. 

2. Create two antlers using the antler template following the same steps outlined above. 

3. Now that you have all of your pieces, glue them together using a hot glue gun (this is a good job for grown-ups, or for older kids with a lot of supervision). We recommend a hot glue gun over other types of glue because it will form a nice strong bond and it dries quickly.

4. Attach a piece of ribbon or pipecleaner on the back of your finished deer to hang it up! You could also attach a magnet if you wanted to use this on the fridge.