Gamertell

Inspired by the cross stitch projects (and by our very own Jenni Lada), I picked up a pack of Ikea’s plastic beads and decided to give a go at some 8-bit art.

Since I live pretty close to an Ikea, I picked up Ikea’s bucket o’ beads (aka Pyssla, US$5.99) which contains ten colors, most of which are appropriate for old-school avatars. For my first project I opted for a Racoon Mario from the classic NES game, Super Mario Bros. 3. For the working base I used Ikea’s Pyssla bead shape set (US$2.00) which includes four colored shapes. The largest is the white square with 29 x 29 pegs.

To create a pattern, I scouted around the web and found a few decent images of Mario. I first tried to hack it apart in Photoshop but that proved too cumbersome. Instead, I went with the cross stitch idea - since both melty beads and cross stitch work on a grid - and found a couple free image-to-pattern cross stitch programs. I toyed with both KG-Chart LE, a free program, and PCStitch 7, a professional application with a decent free trial mode. Both allow for point-and-click square-by-square editing, which is highly convenient.

Since the Ikea bead bucket only contains 10 colors, I had a very limited palette. KG-Chart LE proved a little too light for such a limited palette so I primarily used PCStitch 7. I created a pallet, imported the image, set the stitch width at 29 (the white square’s peg width and height) and edited the design. I liked the Raccoon Mario with blue overalls with brown ears and tail even if it’s not the NES avatar from Super Mario 3.  I spent more time looking for a good image to convert than I did converting it (about 15-20 min to convert).

The trial of PCStitch doesn’t allow you to save or export the final pattern, so I took a screen shot of both the pattern on the grid (the useful pattern for placing beads) and the Final Pattern Preview the program generates. Then it was simply a matter of following the pattern. You can see the screenshot, reference Mario and progress from blank board to finished Mario in the Photo Gallery.

In less than 45 minutes I was able to place all the pegs and iron them own to the final design. I ironed both sides which not all beaders do. The nice thing is that even though the beads are round, they form small square when ironed. Ironing both sides made the finished object two-sides and, if you hold it up to a light, you can see through all the colors except black and brown.

The whole project cost about $8 and took an hour and half to complete, and it hardly made a dent in that bucket of beads. The final Mario is 5 in. wide, 5 1/2 in. tall and about as thick as a quarter.

Any suggestions for my next bead project?
Read [Gamertell] Photo Gallery [Gamertell]

Check out the gallery: Raccoon Mario using Ikea's Pyssla beads