Fuse-Bead Space Invaders

The funny thing about decorating a baby’s room is that it's really just an opportunity to decorate a bedroom with all the crazy stuff that you'd secretly really like to see in your own bedroom. It's also a chance to surround the baby with all the stuff that you enjoy to try and indoctrinate the kid into your way of thinking right from the get go. 

Hama bead Space Invader under construction.

So, having already bought a lightsaber night light and drawn up plans for a Lego Star Wars mobile, I decided it was time to think about gaming themed decorations. My Duke Nukem Forever poster and Aliens: Colonial Marines bandana are perhaps not baby appropriate (not to mention that the poster is already on my bedroom wall), and so I've taken to making my own decorations with bead art.

The first time I was introduced to bead art was through the youtube channel of internet commentator, and all round master shit stirrer, Asalieri.  Looking around the net people have been able to make some fairly cool stuff. Pretty much anything from the pixilated 8-bit era can be reproduced in beads. It looks easy, and fun, so why not try? Well it turns out that almost no where in New Zealand stocks fuse-beads. Certainly not the Perla brand which is popular in the United States. Online store mightyape.co.nz stocks some beads produced by Hama, but not all colours, and frustratingly (and somewhat confusingly) does not stock the peg boards necessary to make any artwork. So after ordering a bag of 6000 beads and 6 peg boards directly from Hama in the United Kingdom I was ready to go.

Hama bead Space Invader still under construction

My first attempt has been a collection of 3 small space invaders. To be honest I'm pretty happy with the results. After finishing a bead Very Hungry Caterpillar my fiancé has started work on a Hama bead Pac man and ghosts set. I'm thinking my next Hama bead project will be from one of my favourite games as a child; Luke Skywalker from the Sega master system version of Star Wars.

This kid will be a Star Wars, Lego, and video game fan in no time! Now if only we owned a house with a baby’s room that we could actually start decorating....

Three completed Hama bead Space Invaders.

EDIT: It turned out that my next Hama bead project was Duke Nukem from Duke Nukem 2. I'm very happy with it.

Hama bead Duke Nukem