Thursday, December 07, 2017

The Ultimate Hama Bead Storage



For the last two years, my daughter has wanted a Minecraft themed birthday party, and both of those parties have involved the children making Minecraft themed creations out of Hama beads.  For the first party, Hama beads were so popular that we had to restructure the party as we went along to make time for more Hama bead creations!


This is a few of the things the children made at my daughter's first party...


...  and this was the 3D Sqaishey and Minecraft sea lantern that accompanied the cake for her second party.  As you can see, both Minecraft and Hama beads are very popular in our house!

This, combined with my own love of Hama beads, has meant that I've built up quite a collection of Hama beads over the last few years. 


With 6 children all sitting around a table, making Hama bead creations, there will always be a problem of working out the best way to store and use them.  I did start off with them all in a divided box, but this doesn't really work when you have a lot of children, all trying to use the Hama beads at the same time.  Also, what happens if you need to empty a section?  You can't tip the whole divided box upside down.  


If I was going to find a solution that worked, each colour would have to be in its own box, so that it could be passed around a table, and each box would have to have a secure lid.



In the UK, the cheapest place I managed to find these drawers was on sale at B and Q.  (I've always bought them when they were on offer - which is why I have one rainbow set and two clear sets.)  In the US, they are available on Amazon.com here.  I started with one set of 16 and realised that it would not be enough for the first party, so I quickly progressed to 2 sets.  When the second party approached, I wanted to purchase some glow in the dark Hama beads and so, of course, I needed to buy a third set of drawers.  


I think my Hama bead obsession might be a little out of hand!

I'm really not the most organised of people - like most crafters, I'm pretty untidy, but occasionally something takes over and I manage to sort myself out.


As you can see, each box or drawer has a Hama bead flower stuck on the front with extra strong double sided sticky tape.


I made the flowers on a large hexagon Hama beadboard as the pegs are set out in a honeycomb pattern.



I got so organised in fact, that I labeled each box with the colour name and product code.  (The code is important as different suppliers have different names for some of the colours.)  I'm sure this would make a special kind of person very happy.  It certainly makes me happy anyway!

At the moment I'm sticking with three drawers - I'm not sure I've got room for more. I am very intrigued by those stripy Hama beads though...


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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi! I've got an extensive hama bead collection and my current drawers aren't cutting it. I've been looking into getting these boxes but I have the problem that I'm very bad at judging the size and how much beads I can fit in one (I don't want to buy the boxes and find that they are too small)

I'm wondering what size you went for and how many beads you can fit in it? (example: one 1,000 bead bag?)

I don't know how old this blog is so sorry bout that...

Kathryn - Craftmehappy said...

Hi, that’s a good point. They are some of the smallest Really Useful Boxes you can buy. They hold 0.14 litres and I believe that I didn’t manage to get 1000 Hama beads in them. It was probably closer to 700 Hama beads to a box.

CraftyTigra said...

I've been using those same boxes for polymer clay storage, didn't even cross my mind to use them for hama beads!
Cost-saving idea- I found these exact boxes at my local Dollarama

ishhu said...

nice