What to make with fuse beads

Coasters, keyrings, magnets, decorations and boxes — the things that survive being useful.

Coasters are the most useful thing you can make and the easiest to get right, because there is no subject to recognise. A full 29×29 board of a repeating geometric pattern comes out at 14.5 cm, which is a mug plus room for error, and both sides need ironing because it will be handled and washed.

Keyrings are the fastest. A small 14×14 board is twenty minutes, and the only extra you need is a jump ring — melt or drill a hole in a corner bead before you attach it rather than after, and iron both sides properly, because a keyring lives in a pocket.

Magnets turn any finished piece into something that stays in the house instead of in a drawer. Self-adhesive magnetic tape from a stationery shop, cut to size and stuck to the back once the piece is fully cold. Warm plastic and adhesive do not bond.

Hanging decorations are the seasonal answer and the reason Christmas is by far the biggest subject in this hobby. Small pieces, thread through one of the bead holes near the top — no need for a fixing — and a dozen of them is one evening.

Boxes and small containers are the step up. Five or six flat panels ironed separately and then joined edge to edge with the iron or with glue. It is the first project where accuracy matters, because panels that are one bead out do not close.

Bookmarks work well and almost nobody makes them: long and narrow, two or three colours, and they exploit the one thing beads do better than paper, which is that a bookmark 3 mm thick stays where you put it.

Wall pictures are where the large 57×57 board earns its keep. At 28.5 cm square, with a picture that has been chosen to read from across a room, it stops looking like a craft project and starts looking like a picture — which is a different thing to be able to give someone.

Whatever you make, iron both sides if it will be touched and one side if it will only be looked at. Almost everything that comes apart later comes apart because only the front was done.