CRAFTING is a great way to celebrate Halloween and that’s exactly what Teen Services librarian, Nichole King, of the Morgan Hill library, decided to do.
“Today we are doing one of our Halloween crafts and we’re using perler beads to do our designs,” King said.
Attendees of the craft event had their pick of designs, from a black cat, pumpkins, a witch, a bat, Frankenstein, a werewolf, and even a Hello Kitty zombie.
Perler beads, or hama beads, as they are sometimes referred to, are plastic beads that can be arranged on a pegboard and then melted with an iron to create
a design.
“The reason why I like to do them is that they’re very reminiscent of what I did growing up,” King said. “They’re like a retro craft.”
Perler bead patterns can be found online on sites such as Pinterest, or they can be purchased in complete kits, which include everything you need to get started.
“I like to provide the patterns, but what I think is really great about perler beads is you can do any design you want,” King said.
Grace Cardosa, 16, opted for the bat pattern and built on it to create a Pokemon character, which she plans to add to her collection.
“I have some other Pokemon perler beads that I made when I was younger,” Cardosa said.
King explained how some crafts require a certain level of experience is necessary, but with perler beads “it’s a craft that’s great for any age, any skill level,” King said.
Four-year-old Kaiya Lewis, who accompanied her mom, Shawna Lewis, to the library to return books decided to see what the craft hour was all about.
“We’ve done other crafts before and we just decided to pop in,” Lewis said. And at the end of the hour, Kaiya left with a miniature pumpkin she was quite proud of.
King said once your design is complete there are a number of ways to show it off, from adding a pin to it and turning it into a piece of jewelry to framing the larger pieces, as King has done.
“You can turn them into art projects,” King said.
Katrina Sharp, 13, had a good idea what she would do with her finished piece. “I’ll probably give it to my mom,” Sharp said.
“I think it went really well,” King said, adding that there was a great age range of kids and teens, and families.
“Most of them created something and a lot of them used the patterns, but a lot of people did their own creations too,” King said.
For more information on events and programs at the Morgan Hill library visit sccl.org/morganhill.
