Introduction

Hello! I am a father of two living in Banbury, UK. I didn’t take much notice of hama bead (also known as perler bead) art when my daughter started doing it. It was only following the sudden death of their grandmother that I rashly promised to make some hama bead designs of her favourite Pokemon and My Little Pony characters to send to her and her brother while they stayed with their mother’s family in the immediate aftermath.

These designs proved popular! Since then I’ve developed many designs and become more and more ambitious! Many of the hama bead designs I will feature on here have been based either entirely or in part on the work of others that I have found on the internet. I claim no ownership of these designs. However, I often found it difficult to reproduce these designs purely from images of the finished article. I found it helpful to work out the designs using a spreadsheet before starting with the beads. I will link to these files in each post to make it easier for anyone who wants to try to make these designs themselves.

Happy hama beading!

My Little Pony Pinkie Pie Hama Bead Pattern

Pinkie Pie My Little Pony Hama Bead

At some point I rashly promised my daughter I’d do all the My Little Pony characters! Here’s my Pinkie Pie (not something I ever thought I’d say!). I found this pattern online and used (gasp!) non-hama bead colours to make it. I’ve done the spreadsheet with suggested hama colours, so it won’t look exactly like this one, but should be pretty close.

Spreadsheet file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EleeFyPR6zAEdJkC-H4mJ9bSRMVbL3_g

R2-D2 Star Wars pattern

Another internet find, this is a quick design to complete. Everyone’s childhood favourite Star Wars robot, he has only recently been overtaken in my affections by K2SO. A quick and easy design, R2-D2 only needs five colours you’ll easily be able to find in a mixed colour bead set.

(BTW if your childhood favourite was C3-PO, you need to ask yourself some hard questions).

Spreadsheet file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=10SIk0S9MkEsap6wfcIunlJdiCkAgfIlA

Megaman

Another super-quick and easy pattern, this time of Capcom videogame character Megaman. He’s had a revival of late, with a new game and TV show. This 8-bit character sprite is easy to convert into a hama bead pattern, requiring just five colours. His videogames are *much* harder, requiring the super-human reactions you only enjoy as a teenager. As a fat-fingered forty-something I enjoy much less success with Megaman than I once did… 😦

Spreadsheet file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-Bz79vD0qMRqXNSfPJlSA_vyG_pmYwBI