Sometimes it's impossible to get beads of the exact color you want, so you have to use your best judgement sometimes. As for ironing, make sure you're using ironing paper so the beads don't melt to the iron. You can get ironing paper at pretty much any hobby store. Also, make sure the iron is not set on steam. I have mine set to 3 out of a possible 10 because that's the highest I can have it without steam. I melt mine as much as I can at least to the point where they're going to stay together, but not too much so the colors don't bleed. I like to keep the holes somewhat visible, and I don't press down really hard. You want to put enough pressure so it'll melt the beads, but not too much, otherwise the design will become too flat.
There's a seller that I buy all my beads from and she has just about every color you can think of, and they're really cheap.
If you plan on making a lot, I recommend ordering 10,000 beads because the shipping is cheaper and you can order up to 10 different colors, but you can also get individual colors in 1000 packs.
As for colors, there are so many colors that it's hard to keep track of which ones you need, so I use this: [Link]
That has most of the main colors you'll need. The names are hard to read so you might need to zoom it in yourself. If you need a color with a strange name (say, cheddar), you'll find that color with that name in the shop that I listed. Those are the official names, as bizarre as it is.
Another thing I use if I'm not sure which colors to use on a sprite is this site that converts sprites to bead colors. It's not 100% accurate and will change some colors to colors that aren't exactly similar, but it helps on some occasions and tells you how many beads the design will take. Here's the link: [Link]
In less artistic news, I picked up a boxed copy of Kid Chameleon a couple of days ago (no manual, sadly). It says Mega Drive on the box, but I checked, it works on a NTSC Genesis. I'll gladly throw that in as a prize for that game.
Also, I have (cart only) Aladdin and Lion King for the grab bag.
No worries Mecha, I'm throwing in the original Top Gun. At least Sub-terrania doesn't let you think you've won before getting REALLY crappy with the controls.
I can throw in Shining Force as well since no one seems to want to buy it. No instructions, but it has the box. What do you guys think about throwing in an atari game? Star Raiders was pretty popular back in the day.
It wasn't incredibly difficult as it was just super annoying.
Getting all the pieces to iron properly was a pain in the ass because you have to iron them enough where the parts won't snap when trying to connect them to other parts, but if you iron it too much, it won't fit flush. Also, for whatever reason, some beads just refused to melt, while others were melting way too much. This is a problem I ran into for at least half of the parts and I was close to giving up at one point.
The entire thing is made up of 50 seperate pieces, half of them being on the tires alone. If you want, I can send you the plans if you're interested in doing one yourself.
As you can see, Bandage Girl and the Doctor didn't make it. By the time I added text, there just wasn't room for them. I also had to simplify the design somewhat due to the size of the lines I was working with.
I'm happy with the Meat Boy side. The other side still doesn't look quite right to me. Maybe we can hash out a better layout next time. Also, I wasn't paying attention when I was sanding it and I took off part of the letters on the far right side. Oh well, it'll still work as advertised.
Finally, I apologize for the picture quality. I was in a rush to take these pics and the lighting was less than satisfactory.
Someone above voiced a concern about shipping. Perhaps this person thought that it would be heavy? Anyway, the whole thing is made of aluminum, so it weighs about 2lbs, so shipping should be no big deal.