Making Process
In Beadcraft Sam's own words
My friend loves this emoji and his birthday was coming up, so I thought — why not make it. I’d done a couple of smaller pieces before but nothing at 80×80.
I used the Perler Bead Studio to convert it. Dropped the palette from 26 colors to 12, which sounds like a lot but honestly most of those original colors were tiny gradient steps that don’t read at bead scale anyway. The star reflections on the sunglasses lenses were the one thing I was careful about — those are what makes the emoji actually look “cool” rather than just “face with dark glasses.”
Took about three evenings. My main tip: sort your bead colors into small trays before you start. I didn’t do that the first time and spent half of one session just hunting for the right blue.
He framed it and put it up in his room. Mission accomplished.
