Making your own enamel dots

A few weeks ago I had watch a YouTube video explaining how they were making their own enamel dots. At first I wasn’t going to watch the video because I thought they were using the Viva décor pens, but I decided to go ahead and watch the video anyways. I am really happy that I did decide to watch the video because I found a new way to make my own enameled dots. In this post it will be very picture heavy and I also have made a YouTube video explaining and showing the process of making your own enameled dots. I did not come up with this idea on my own, and there are plenty of other videos out there showing you how they make enameled dots, I just figured that for my subscribers and for my channel that I would make a video showing how I do it.

Before I get into the supplies that you will need, I want to take a brief moment here to explain the process and to give you a couple of tips. First off for this method you will be melting plastic beads in an oven. Any time that you melt plastic you generally get some kind of odor, my best suggestion for you is to make sure you are in a well-ventilated area, try having some fresh air coming into your work area. Now when I melted the beads there was a small amount of odor nothing overwhelming but needless to say it was still an odor. In my work area I did have a window open and after I had made a few batches I did have to turn the fan on just to help circulate some fresh air. Also you are going to be working with small beads so just use some common sense and not leave your beads lying around if you drop one pick it up especially if you have small children or pets. I have three miniature pinchers and I was constantly dropping little beads onto the floor and if I wasn’t quick enough to pick them up my dogs were trying to eat them.  And on a final do not leave your beads unintended in the oven; you don’t want to burn down your house making enamel dots. Okay now that I got that off my chest let’s go ahead and talk about the supplies that you’re going to need.

1.       A toaster oven or oven

2.       Parchment paper

3.       Pony beads or perler beads   these can be found at your local craft store

That’s it for the supplies this is a really easy process but the best thing I can say is to just experiment first because your oven made cook faster than my oven or vice versa.  Also pony beads come in different sizes the bigger the size and the bigger the enameled on your end up with. I’m going to be showing you pictures below of 9 mm, 7 mm, and 3 mm pony beads and perler beads which after melted and up to be about a 3 mm. 

The directions are very simple for making these beads. For the pony beads I baked mine at 425 for 8 to 10 min.  For the perler beads I have been baking mine at 425 for 15 to 20 min. Now I do want to say I really like the pony beads the best and the only reason for that is that I get consistent results every time I baked them. The Perler beads I have not had consistent results with. It just seems like different colors once it melts at different times. If I could get consistent results than I would really like those beads better. So let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the pictures below and you can see the results that I had with the beads. Again I will include a link to my YouTube channel to watch the video on how I made these.

Okay up first is going to be the 9 mm pony beads, and with this bead here it is a translucent bead. Which means you can see through it. So for me in a way this is not a true enamel dot. But I do really love the way this turned out. I also compared all the sizing for the beads to a quarter so you can someone get a true sense of the size.

Next up is the 7 mm pony bead and I have to say I love the way these turned out, and I really like the size as well.

Up last for the pony beads is the 3 mm size. And I really like this size as well to they are nice and small and you could use them at a million different places.

Here are the perler beads, when they cook down they are about a 3 mm size as well. Like I said earlier I really wish I could get consistent results with these beads because they would be my favorites. But since I can’t get consistent results I would have to recommend going with the pony beads. Again this is just my own personal opinion.

I want to thank you for taking the time of your busy day to stop by my blog or my YouTube channel or any of my other social media sites. If you have any questions you can e-mail me or send me a private message through YouTube or on any other social media site and I will try my best to get back to you as quick as possible. Please leave me a comment or subscribe to my channels or join me socially. As always thank you so much for your time and have a great day. If you would like to watch the video click here.