Welcome! This is the page where you'll find the latest news, tips, tricks, and ideas for getting the most out of our software products.
Designs with 16 Large Pegboards!?
A few customers have written to us asking whether it's possible to use our software to create Perler Beads designs that use16 large square pegboards - 4 across and 4 down. The answers is... Yes!
If you have the time (approximately 12 hours) and beads (13,456 of them!) then here's how to create a Perler Beads project that will take up a large section of your wall.
Step 1: Find an image and resize it to 116 x 116 pixels.
Here's one that I'd love to have made out of Perler Beads, if I only had the time:
Step 2: In Paint Shop Pro (or your favorite imaging program), apply the PERLER1.PAL color palette to the image
and then slice the image into 4 separate images, each 58x58 pixels in size.
Step 3: Run each image through Fuse Bead Image Converter. You'll then have 4 FBP (fuse bead pattern) files that you can import into Fuse Bead Pattern Designer.
Here's the top-left section of the image in Fuse Bead Pattern Designer:
Step 4: Now that you have all 4 sections in Fuse Bead Pattern Designer, you can print the color keys, find a comfortable chair, and place those beads!
Tim Dutcher
November 11, 2007
Perler Beads are safe!
An important message from Dimensions, the manufacturer of Perler Beads:
Dear Perler Customer,
As a valued customer of Perler Beads, we are sending along this
information to reassure you of the safety of our product. Following is a portion
of a press release-if you haven't heard or seen this information
up to now, we hope it answers any questions you may have.
On the heels of the recall of Aqua Dots, craft bead producer
Perler Beads, an American company located in Cloverdale, California, has offered
complete reassurance that Perler Beads are perfectly safe for use by children.
The recall of all Aqua Dots products should not be confused
with Perler Beads, which are also used by children to create designs on pegboards.
The major differences between the two products are that Perler Beads use heat
to fuse the designs, not chemicals, and that Perler Beads are made in the United
States of food-safe plastic.
President Kevin Fick said, "We produce a safe product
for children, and as parents ourselves take great pride in maintaining the strictest
standards of quality. Parents and grandparents can feel safe in purchasing and
using Perler Beads."
Perler Beads have been sold worldwide for over 25 years, and
have been safely used by tens of millions of families. This classic activity
is now being enjoyed by parents who used to play with them as children!
Some facts about Perler Beads:
. The beads are made in California USA.
. The plastic used in the beads and pegboard shapes is also made in the
USA.
. The plastic and color dyes used to manufacture our beads are all non-toxic.
. The beads are made of LDPE, a food-grade plastic.
. There is no chemical coating on Perler Beads.
If you have any further questions, please contact consumer.service@perlerbeads.com
Perler Beads is a division of Dimensions, 1801 N. 12th Street, Reading PA 19604
1-800-523-8452.
Tim Dutcher
November 9, 2007
Help us Sell and Earn $$$
To reach a wider market worldwide, Fuse Bead Software is pleased to announce our relationship with ClickBank and their affiliate network. What this means to you, if you're interested in making some extra money, is that you can promote Fuse Bead Pattern Designer from your own website, advertising, e-mail, newsletters, PTA fundraisers, flyers, etc. and earn 33% of each sale.
Becoming an affiliate is easy... and it's free. All you need to get started is 1) an account on ClickBank.com and 2) a little marketing know-how (or willingness to learn). A little bit of up-front effort could lead to $250 or more per month of extra income, just by helping to promote our software. And we take care of all customer support, updates, etc. -- you just collect commissions!
If you're interested in becoming an affiliate and earning commissions, here's what you need to do:
Step 1 : First, you need to Sign Up With ClickBank (if you're not a member already). It's VERY easy. Simply fill out the form right here.
Step 2 : Once you have an account nickname, click here to get your affiliate link.
Step 3 : Once you have your affiliate link, your goal is to get as many people as possible to click the link and purchase the Fuse Bead Pattern Designer software. You can advertise via banner ads on your website, send mass emails to your existing contacts, write a review of our products and include your affiliate link, or advertise with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.
With the enormous popularity of Perler Beads and tens of millions of families with young children, your earning potential is quite good. We encourage you to learn more about affiliate marketing and ClickBank and consider this easy way to make some extra money.
Lake Pointe Enterprises
November 6, 2007
KoolStuff4Kids and Fuse Bead Software
When we released our first version of Fuse Bead Pattern Designer in May 2007, we immediately got an e-mail from KoolStuff4Kids.com, who expressed an interest in reselling the software. They saw the potential for a large number of sales and it turns out they were right. During the Summer of 2007, KoolStuff4Kids ran a promotion for Fuse Bead Pattern Designer and sold 50 copies in just a few days. As a new software vendor, this was obviously very exciting.
We want to thank KoolStuff4Kids for helping to launch our software, which is now in hundreds of homes worldwide.
Tim Dutcher
November 6, 2007
Create Signs with Perler Beads!
In looking at my son's bedroom door the other day, I saw a Winnie the Pooh growth chart but knew something was missing... his name! All kids love to have their name on their bedroom door. And what better way to create a unique one-of-a-kind sign than with Perler Beads.
Sitting down and spelling-out letters with Perler Beads is challenging, at least it is for me. What I needed was a template that spelled his name in a unique way. Here's what I did. First, I went to www.myfonts.com and clicked on Best Sellers. The website lets you type text to see what it looks like in different fonts. I typed "ETHAN" and settled on the font named "One Night Stand" for this project. I then took a screenshot of the rectangle with Ethan's name, pasted it into Paint Shop Pro, and went through the process of converting it to a Perler Beads pattern with the Fuse Bead Image Converter software.
Now, I'm sure all of you reading this could do much better than I did creating this project -- for one, you probably would've used more than mostly black & white beads (but that's a dad for you, I guess). But, my son is happy with it so that makes me proud and happy, too.
Okay, here it is, Ethan's new door sign!
If you've created any type of sign with Perler Beads, please send a picture to me and I'll include it on this site. Thanks!
Tim Dutcher
October 6, 2007
More blogging from Tim Dutcher... Yes, I have a day job!