These look like tiny little barrel-shaped beads. The Mega Pack contains 4500 beads in various colors, and enough peg boards and templates for four children. (There are four boards and four each of four templates.)
There are also two spray bottles and one design tool to share. Our pack came with four instruction sheets, but Zirrly sent us an email with corrected instructions to use instead.
The big bag of beads contains red, yellow, green, blue, pink, white, and brown. There were extra baggies of orange and black included. The beads have a seam on them that should be placed up when creating a design. We found that the project stuck better when this line was placed up.
These beads fuse together with water. Once a project is completed, you just spray it a few times and let it dry. The beads get sticky and dry together. Our pack came with a few misformed beads, so we put them in a glass of water to see what would happen. They completely dissolved in a short amount of time! We also discovered that spraying the design too much left us with a weaker project, sometimes a gooey mess.
The beads are small, but all of my kids were able to handle them easily. Despite a wide range of ages (1st to 9th grade), everyone enjoyed using them. The suggested age is five and up.
The templates show through the clear plastic boards so it's easy to tell which color should be placed on each peg.
When a bead is put on the wrong peg, it can be difficult to get off unless it is near the edge of the design. The design tool made it easier to remove these mistakes. The design tool was also helpful after the project was finished and dry - we used it to pry and peel the finished design off the board.
After the designs are complete, you must spray them to get them to fuse together. The instructions said to spray them then let them dry for a minimum of 60 minutes.
This is where things got difficult. We let them dry for two hours and they were dry to the touch. But apparently not all the way through, because as soon as we attempted to peel the design off the board, it started to fall apart.
My girls have used other kinds of water fuse beads, and their experience has taught them to leave the project overnight. So we did. The next day we were able to get the project off the board in a more complete piece. But, those little pegs in the middle of the beads hold them very tightly! When the beads fuse, they also fuse to the pegs so you have to be so very careful when peeling the project off.
It took a little bit of trial and error, but we've got it figured out now! And if a project comes apart, you can just put it back on the board and spray it lightly again to fix a break. With a little practice it's easy to figure out how much water is enough, but not too much, and how much drying time is enough.
Here are our finished projects from our first try. The elephant has little stands that attach to its feet so it can stand up!
You aren't confined to just using the design templates. You can create your own designs too! And you're not limited by the size of the board because they connect to each other!
We created many other projects. Here are a few of our favorites - a Super Beads sign, an egg, an eyeball, a strawberry, and three pencils.
There are many Super Beads kits available. My youngest thinks the jewelry set looks really neat.
Crew members received different packs. Be sure to check out the other reviews.
Where to find Super Beads:
You guys did a fantastic job reviewing and presenting our Super Beads. We're super impressed. Thanks so much!!!
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