Mothers Day Hama Bead Designs

10 March 2012, 1:18 pm

Mother’s Day is round the corner again and it is the perfect time for little darlings to furnish the mums with Hama Bead cards and presents. With the help of my own willing slaves at home, we’ve come up with some projects for you to try out.

Top of the list is my Mother’s Day Pen Pot gift.

This 3D design is made in 5 panels and I made it using the 2 packs of the lovely Pearl Hama Bead colour, a large square board and a variety of left of beads from the Pastel and Solid mixtures.

The four main panels look like this.

and the bottom has room for a secret design of your own I ran out of beads and was in a hurry!)

The tabs fit together pretty snugly but may be too tight depending on how you iron. I tend to only iron on one side and use the un-ironed side for the display. Once all your pieces are together, fit the panels together.

You can download the pdf of the pattern here or on CraftMerrily. Don’t follow my photo; I made a mistake on the size of one panel!

In pearl, the ironed side does get a shiny finish though, which makes it work really well as an outside edge.

My 12 year old daughter Maddy created this cute bowl and trumped me as I was convinced it wouldn’t work.

She ironed it on one side and while still hot, moulded inside a breakfast bowl to give it shape.

Once it had cooled, she stitched it together with pink embroidery thread with a small purple disk of Hama as the base.


Brilliant!

Amelie finished off with a lovely simple heart design.

This would look lovely hung in a window :)

We’re currently getting used to a new baby in the house but as soon as I can I will add these designs to the CraftMerrily as a free Hama Bead Design pdf to download :)

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Christmas Ideas with Hama Beads

2 December 2011, 2:25 pm

Christmas is definitely the time of year for Hama Bead crafting; if you haven’t already found it, take a look at our archive of Christmas Hama Bead Patterns available for free on the site.

This year Hama brought out some lovely new Christmas themed Hama Bead kits which have been very popular. Combining tradition flat designs and 3D, they really give you something to work on and have lovely colours and detail to the designs.

Hama Bead Snowman in 3D

Hama Bead Angel Designs.

Hama Bead Santa

The single use Snowman and Santa Press boards also continue to be popular, ideal for hanging decorations and as an easy, no iron craft and you can also buy the reusable Santa pegboard separately. Don’t forget you’ll need some Midi Hama Beads to go along with it though! Why not try out the metallic gold and silver or maybe the pearl for angel dresses?

Over at our family blog Patch of Puddles, we are doing regular craft updates of ideas for kids and adults in the run up to Christmas. Why not take a look?

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Hama Beads Reviews from Bloggers

11 November 2011, 3:02 pm

Recently I asked some blogging Twitter followers to review some packs of Hama Beads for me; they each got to choose a set to review and we sent them out. Here is what they thought of them. Being the Pearl of Toys, the feedback was, as you’d expect, pretty good!

Kai with Maxi Beads

Josie, at Sleep is for the Weak, also tried out Maxi Beads. It was raining and Kai needed occupying but Josie really only wanted to knit and drink coffee; the Dinosaur Maxi Hama Set turned out to bring them both lots of joy :) We are so pleased it did!

Over at Red Ted Art, Maggie got a proper surprise when she discovered that her children really loved My First Hama Beads – she was expecting a messy toy and frustration and was pleasantly surprised to find her two children really enjoyed them.

Stay at Home Daddy for 2 reviewed a Toy Story Hama Bead Kit. Those kits can be a little trickier for young children but they get lots of pleasure from working with a parent – in fact, this blog proves that it is often that which provides them with the greatest joy :lol:

My friend Kirsty put together another review for me with her two kids, who are great friends of my own 4 girls. Kirsty is no stranger to Hama beads (not that I force my friends to buy them or anything!) but her kids enjoyed getting the love back. They particularly enjoyed trying out the press pendants in the Red Midi Hama Bead Activity Kit.

At the Madhouse Family Reviews, they’ve used Hama beads before too; Press and Play Hama Beads were a total novelty to them though. I originally persuaded DKL to bring these back into the country a few years ago and they then got reboxed and relaunched. They’ve been really growing in popularity lately, as a single use, 3D craft. 5 out of 5 from the Madhouse is a pretty stirling effort – I’m so pleased they liked them!

I loved the review at Yellow’s Best too; over there they use crafts and toys to help fine motor control through play. We originally came to Hama Beads when our eldest, Fran, was 4. She really struggled to concentrate on anything (still does at times and she’s 13 now!) but Hama really worked well for her. Initially she just filled boards with random beads but she gradually became more confident and still enjoys them now.

L and J had lots of fun with the UFO Glow Hama Bead Kit.

They are already a very crafty bunch over at The Imagination Tree where weekly craft linkys are held to encourage lots of preschool messy play and creativity. Again, Maxi beads were a huge hit with both the small people. The Imagination Tree was recently winner of Blog of the Year at the MADS Awards – a well deserved winner in our opinion.

Adele at Circus Queen had a different take on Hama beading. Since her little girl is only a few months old, she decided to try out Mini Hama Beads and use them to decorate her nursery. Mini Beads are more like cross stitch in some ways, fiddly but detailed and very satisfying when done. Despite intervention from the cat, she was really pleased with her results! (And we salute her; Mini Beads test my patience in a big way!)

We have our own family blog over at Patch of Puddles – the girls still regularly do Hama Beads and all their ideas are collected together in a Hama Beads Category. If you have a blog and you’d be interested in reviewing toys and crafts for us, follow me on Twitter at MerrilyMe

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Hama Bead Halloween Round Up

29 October 2011, 10:58 am

Halloween is one of the times when Hama Beads ALWAYS come out in our house. Invariably I end up with beady ghosts and spiders decorating the establishment and I’m made to jump by glow in the dark hama bead creatures looming up out of the dark in our downstairs loo :lol:

Hama Bead Skeleton
Daughter Number 3 made this Hama Bead Skeleton picture for me last week, which I thought was rather fabulous and spooky ghosts are great for free beading since you can’t really go wrong with the shape!

Glow in the Dark Hama Beads make for a fantastic spooky effect. Daughter Number 2 went for a vampire teddy bear – quite a new take on a normally cute pegboard!

The shapes and images in Halloween traditions are so familiar that kids find it easy to create ideas. This witches hat is very effective, even though it is really simple.
Hama Bead Witches Hat

All the Hama Bead pattern books have Halloween Ideas in them, as well as great Autumnal and Harvest designs.

These 5 images come from the 3D Spooky Kit – perfect for Halloween but great all year round for the blood thirsty, or those wanting an introduction to 3D beading while the Hama Bead Glow in the Dark set remains a long standing favourite.

Here are some more great spooky ideas from Activity Village.

And our own Halloween Hama Bead Picture Screen.

A round up of ideas from Ideas4Kids. (One looks quite familiar!)

Take a look at Flickr, which has some very adventurous ideas.

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Hama Bead Seasons Free Patterns

16 October 2011, 4:01 pm

A few years ago, after I lost my last remaining copy of the Hama Designer CD, I created some season bead pictures on another design website. I like them, but I’ve been meaning to make some Hama versions of them since I managed to lay my hands on (possibly the last copy in the world) of the design programme.

So here are some free Hama Bead patterns to enjoy that should be easier enough for young children to do, especially in you have a transparent Midi Bead Pegboard.

Right click on the pictures to get a full size printable version. These are freely available to download but must not be sold as digital or paper copies. Copyright Merrily Toys & Crafts 2011.

We very much appreciate purchases of Hama Beads from CraftMerrily, our family craft shop. Enter “beadmerrily bag” in the comments for a free pack of beads.

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Swan Lake 3D Hama Bead Design

14 October 2011, 12:03 pm

Making 3D designs in Hama Beads is great fun – one of our daughter in particular really enjoys the challenge. Last year she made this Swans in a Pond Design, also known rather grandly as Swan Lake in Hama Beads!

This design was made the day before our baby boy Freddie was born, who sadly died 11 days later. In honour of Infant Loss Awareness Day, we have put the pattern designs for this piece into a pdf and are selling it as a downloadable Hama Bead project sheet for £1 on our website. All proceeds will be donated to Hinchingbrooke SCBU in Freddie’s memory. We hope some people will choose to do so and join the 1000 customers over the last 18 months who have donated to our charity.

Hama Bead Swan Lake 3D Pattern Design

Since we don’t believe in forcing people to make a charitable donation, you can also download it for free from the link above.

However, we will always be extremely grateful to those people who make it possible for us to help other families who experience the trauma of a SCBU stay or Infant Loss.

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Hama Bead Beach Scene

7 August 2011, 12:50 pm

Hama Bead Beach Scene

A few years ago, a good customer Sharon D created this scene for us. I thought it was time it saw the light of day again. You can print all the pattern pieces and make them. We sell a full range of Midi Hama Bead colours and pegboards at CraftMerrily. Add the words “beadmerrily bag” to the comments box when you order and we’ll send you roughly 1000 beads in a mixture bag for free.

Bottom Left Corner

Bottom Right Corner

Top Left Corner

Top Right Corner

Sandcastle 1

Sandcastle 2

Star fish and Shellfish

Beach Toys

Waves

Girl on Beach

Boy on Beach

For this scene you will need at least one large square pegboard, a large circle, large hexagon, boy, girl and a variety of white, blue, yellow, sand, flesh and assorted colours of beads.

How the base looks.

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Royal Wedding Hama Bead Patterns

28 April 2011, 11:35 am

Well okay, we’ve probably left it a bit late, but our children have had lots of fun creating pictures for the Royal Wedding with Hama Beads over the last few days.

I’ve put some of them into the pattern creator; we hope you enjoy them :) You can click on any to see them full size  and then right click to get an easy print version.

The Union Jack Hama Bead pattern fill a Rectangle Hama Bead Pegboard perfectly, but can also be done on two interlocking squares.

Here are three small square flag patterns, perfect as Royal Wedding, Rule Britannia coasters.

One of our girls came up with this great idea for bunting. Here are some simple designs. They have holes in the top so they can be strung in a line.

The Princess board has been a great wedding pegboard, perfect for trying out the new Pearl Hama Bead colour too. Here are some of the things the girls made to celebrate this great British Royal Occasion!

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Most of these were made by our creative 11 year old, Maddy. She is head designer here!

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8 year old Amelie likes to design a cupcake for every occasion.

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Josie thinks that even a penguin can wear a wedding dress.

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Hama Bead Easter Patterns

22 April 2011, 11:14 am

I can always rely on Maddy, my 11 year old daughter, to come up with some brilliant Hama Bead patterns for me and she really went for it this time. Maddy, you are a complete star :) Our family blog, Patch of Puddles, is stuff full of all her creative doodahs :)

We are just going to stick these together and hang them up now :)

Other offerings include Josie’s chicks

and her rabbit

Maddy’s adaptation of a chick breaking out of an egg from one of the Inspiration books

and a set of card topper designs, also by Maddy.

These join all our other free Easter Bead Patterns on BeadMerrily, a Hama Bead Design Resource from CraftMerrily.

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More Easter Hama Bead Inspiration

18 April 2011, 10:53 am

Here are more Easter Hama Bead patterns to inspire you. Most of these are from Shazann who did lots of designs for us a few years ago. I hope they help to get your creative Hama Bead juices going. They are a fantastically creative set of Hama Bead Easter Rabbits, Chicks, Spring Flowers and ducks, using Hexagon, Squares and Eggs. You can buy all your Hama Bead Supplies at CraftMerrily. We pride ourselves on great service, fast and value postage rates and the biggest range of Hama in the UK. We keep all our prices fair and low and have lots of free gifts on offer at checkout.

Our kids have been doing more designs – I’ll add them here later for you :)

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