Fuse beads

I found this article in a Swedish newspaper, "what to do the week before Christmas when you're young in Stockholm". They had found three different workshops where young people could do some crafts. The picture is from "Lava" - a workshop for 13-25 years old people where you can for example bind a book, print a t-shirt, make pins, soap and all kind of things like that.
I love the picture. It is ornaments teenagers have made with fuse beads - you know, those plastic tube beads, that are put on a peg board to make images, and then fused together with an iron.

Here's a blog entry about a young man's adventures with fuse beads and computer game characters
(I think they are called bead sprites...)

and here's a little more sober ideas for Christmas ornaments

Here's some fuse bead designs, like photo frames and such...
Visit perlerbeads.com for more this kind of projects

I don't know what the original purpose of these is... They might be cross stitch mobile phone charms, but... I think that's way too much work for something like that... so I don't know what they are. Anyway, could be used to make fuse bead things. These are cross stitch ornaments, and can just as well be used to make fuse bead ornaments.

P.S. There's now see-through peg boards one can click together into a larger board... so that you can make photos with plastic beads... I don't get the idea of that... (Though these two look very nice... from afar...)
(Here's some free photo-patterns from Swedish nabbi pearls... Could someone please tell me what's the point? They are way too difficult for kids to make and in my opinion waste of time for anyone else... )