Melting Perler Beads

It's been a long time since I last posted. Have not been crafting for a while.
But hopefully will be back at it soon.
While restocking my supplies I fell in love with the enamel dots I saw in the stores. But thought they were a bot expensive. I came across some videos in youtube and posts in blogs about melting perler beads and pony beads.
I haven't melted pony beads yet as they are supposed to smell a bit and didn't want to melt them right now. Will wait for a day when nobody else is in the house .
But I did melt perler beads.

I got a bucket from amazon of mixed beads.

My first attempt was a disaster ! My toaster oven is toast I think. It did not melt the perler beads down propely. I kept adding mins as they wouldn't flatten down and by the time they did flatten they were ugly. I just dumped them.
Then I decided to proceed to regular oven.
And my 2nd attempt - yeah success
The temperature details are below

In regular oven (not the toaster oven) at 350 degrees for 20 -30 minutes or until completely melted to form a dot.

• Black and white beads take longer to melt. I kept the temperature same but increased the time to 30 mins.

Lighter colors less and darker colors more

After the initial success I decided to melt more beads but after sorting them out by colors.

I melted more colors and then I decided to get more perler beads from amazon - the striped ones. The package came with striped and pearl  variety and here I stuck a glitch.

When I melted the pearl variety they left a dot in the center (like the ones we get in the skittles )

I tried with a bit higher temperature and leaving it longer but nope the same result. 

Then I noticed that while melting one of the perler beads had fallen down sideways ( we have to keep them upright usually ) and it had turned out cute though it was oval and not round.

So here is my tip for melting specialty pearl perler beads ( as  I think striped ones will have to melted the usual way to see the stripes and the hole in center can be ignored) melt it turned sideways.

If you want it round shaped then try cutting them into half ( I havent tried that yet but that might come out ok as then the width of cylinder will same as height).

I melt more varieties and also the pony beads and update in another post