a quick question from a Hama Beads virgin please?

[mckenzie]

DS got a set for christmas and neither he nor I have ever seen them before.
He has made the penguin today and I have ironed it as per the directions but now I need to remove it from the board.

How do I do that without it snapping in half or cracking?

TIA

ps. I'll need to buy DD the set for younger children I think. She kept trying to 'help' DS this afternoon with near disastrous results.
The maxi sets don't seem to be so readily available though as the midi, at least as far as I can tell from checking on line.

HI you just peel it off either while it is still hot or wait till it has cooled down, if you ironed it correctly it should just come off. With regards to the bigger set toys r us have them aplenty. Have fun, we love hamma beads in our house although they often end up everywhere.

If you've ironed it properly it should come away easily... but take it off slowly (if it does break it requires the concentration and skills of a neurosurgeon to reposition the broken pieces and re-iron.

wow - thanks for the speedy replies.

Here goes then - fingers crossed that it stays in one piece!

BTW the Ikea Hama-bead type things work just as well as normal Hama in our experience - and they are much much cheaper.

reminds me , I've got a butterfly fairy thing to iron ....

I tend to turn mine over and flex the white base until the ironed creation drops off (a bit like turning a cake onto a plate)

Dd loves hers (she received two sets for Christmas) but has twice knocked the tray of beads onto the floor and the little b*ggers went everywhere, inbetween the floorboards, under the sofa's etc aaarrrggghhh

ours are stored in these. We have 4 of them atm and need another .
I tend to iron lightly (having melted the peg bits on the boards a couple of times), peel while warm, then cover the unironed side and iron that aswell. Stops them falling apart.

Good idea re ironing the reverse. Dd's elephant is falling apart already and she only did it 5 days ago!

Another question - what do you do with the finished creations. I can only display so many on the mantelpiece, and I have put a string through a few and hung them in the window of her room, but what else can I do with them?

Yes, but it's like all the pictures they bring home from school, what do you do with the blardy things forever more? My 4 dd's love em, but we have an awful lot of coasters!

Cross posted on the ever after question!

we have got some dinosaurs, butterflies and stars stuck on two of the windows in the conservatory.
Quite alot on his wardrobe doors and his bookcase shelves (homemade display ones with a wide frontage so they look quite good on there), more on his bedroom windows, and about 10 with are just lying about needing to be put somewhere.
www.holdthatpic.com/photos/414/25195.jpg some he did last year.
I also made a little scrapbook and stuck in pictures of ones that he had done and the date he did them.
A good website for designs is href='www.holdthatpic.com'>HoldThatPic.com FlickR and another Bead Merrily.
You can probably guess that ds1 is, umm, a bit Hama Bead obsessed.

opps FlickR

so, please someone tell me that I am not the only one enjoying doing the Hama beads as much as, if not more than, DS and DD??

BTW you can use greaseproof paper to iron over when you run out of the Hama paper, but i expect you already know that....

No, I didn't know that pollypumpkin. Thanks for the tip. DS has half done a hippo this afternoon and wants to finish it tomorrow and I'm having to hold myself back from finishing it for him! I need to get out more

I have just spent a very enjoyable afternoon with DD1 (4) "doing beadwork" with her. It is totally addictive, we have both found it easier using tweezers. But what can you do with them when you end up with so many?

we haven't got that far yet CBM as DS only got his first set for christmas and I bought DD the Maxi kit today as she was playing havoc with DS's beads. So all we have just now is a penguin, a football and a teddy bear.
for once I think i will be pleased when the novelty wears off but I do worry that the house will be full of these charming 'things' long before that happens!

My 11 month old keeps eating them, there were several in his poo the other day.

presents for grandparents is another good use
dh and ds made a space rocket with ds1's name in it - which is on his bedroom door.

LOL MrsCarrot!