We love Hama beads

You can see in the photo above, a very well-loved Hama bead bulletin board. My daughter made this a few years ago as a present for her Grandpa. He’s kindly taken all his messages off to send me a photo  so I can show you. I purchased the board ready-made, then we glued the Hama bead designs in place.

The first time my partner went into hospital for his paint poisoning, she made him this cute little fridge magnet to cheer him up.

Have you ever used/tried these wonderful, melty beads? If you haven’t, I’ll give you a brief run down. If you’d like a tutorial, let me know and I’ll do one in the near future (they’re still packed away for now). Basically, you buy these great little beads from craft/toy stores. You need a plastic template that has little stumps sticking out. The beads are placed on top of the stumps, so the stump is sitting inside the hole of the bead. Your childs’ fine motor skills and eye hand coordination are challenged as they carefully put on the Hama beads. Designs can be made out of these, with either pre made shaped templates, or children can place the beads in their own creative patterns.

Once they’re happy with their design, an adult needs to place a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top of the beads and iron it until the beads have melted enough to stick together. It’s then left to cool down and harden. Then you’re left with something like you see in the photos above! If you have some craft glue or a hot glue gun, then you can stick the designs to a cork board, a magnet, or whatever you wish. At my daughter’s old school, many kids used to hang them on their bags as a keyring.