Simple Crafts

A craft for everything & everything in a craft.

Hama Bead Shamrock Patterns

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If you are gearing up for some St Patrick’s Day crafting, you might like these free hama bead patterns. Made with Green, Mint Green, Translucent Green and Pastel Green, they cheered up my day enormously. You can also strengthen them around the stalk with clear and make a mobile from them.

Happy with my #shamrock #hamabeads for #stpatricksday #getyourcrafton #bitlate

I sorted the outline first to make it easier and followed inwards from there. On the bigger one, some of the inner rows have an extra bead in the corner to stop it being too square.

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A lovely easy but satisfying pattern to make.

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Finished.

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And some gold coins too… well, it would be rude not to!

St Patrick’s Day Shamrock Jar

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St Patrick’s Day seems the perfect time to bring out two of my favourite crafts again; Fimo and glass jar decorating!

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This is an easy craft which would be great as a sweetie jar (smarties arranged in rainbow layers perhaps?) or a candle jar or a place to collect you very own gold coins. It’s quick to do so here is how we did it.

  1. Blend up scrap green Fimo or Sculpey into a stripy, swirly or mottled look. Of course you can use plain, but we liked the depth and variety we got with a blend. Roll it out and cut out heart shapes using a small icing cutter., then press a texture plate into the surface of the heart if you wish. Our swirls added a little oumphf to the look of the thing.
  2. Arrange the hearts on the jar in groups of 4, making sure that the pieces touch the next 4 leaf clover along at some point. It’s really important clay forms a ring all around the jar so that when it bakes, it contracts and holds on.
  3. Add a blob of contrasting green to the middle and use a blunt tool to add texture. It’s not exactly botanically correct, but it just looks better!
  4. Twist up the remaining clay into a long sausage, double it and make a long thin twisted sausage. Wrap that around the rim of the jar to cover the threat. I made a little charnm sized shamrock to top it off and cover the joins.

For more ideas, see our Pinterest board.


St Patrick’s Day Hat

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Here is a craft Maddy did last year for our family blog in time for St Patrick’s Day. In fact, we did it a month early as I had just had a baby and got confused about the date!

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This was a nice easy cereal packet construction underneath, a wide cylinder stuck with packing tape down the back, a circle with some tabs sticking out cut out and then the tabs stuck down to the cylinder to make the top and a wide rim, with similar tabs glued inside to hold it on. Once it was all secure, Maddy stuck layers of bright green tissue on to the hat and then PVA glue over the top to make it shiny. Actually it was smoother and glossier than it looks in the picture. The belt is just black and yellow card, taped at the back. It was pretty effective as quick fun crafts go and certainly kept her quiet for a while 😉

As is customary, we also have a Pinterest Board for you 😀

Rainbow Hama Bead Pattern

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Rainbow Hama Bead PatternThe delicious bright colours of Hama Beads really lend themselves to rainbow crafting. I’ve had loads of ideas for doing rainbows over the years, from pictures to coasters, to threaded ones on yarn and earphones and decorations for a tree in the garden that lends itself to rainbow is our family history. Sometimes though, simple is good. So to get us started, this pattern is an easy picture which was first featured on BeadMerrily. It is part of a series of designs based on the weather and the seasons and is a good first pattern for children who want to work on bigger Hama Bead designs as it is largely symmetrical and easy to see if you go wrong. The colours can be varied slightly to suit what you have; you could even go for a very surreal rainbow on a greyer day if you wanted. It would make a lovely window design, hung from a thread, if you made it in translucent colours too.

Since rainbows lend themselves well to St Patrick’s Day, here is another pattern with a pot of gold that we did for that time of year. It’s lovely, I think. Although admittedly I am biased 😉

Required: Large Hama Bead Hexagon pegboard, hama beads, iron, ironing paper. Large round for the second one.

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