Hama bead Minecraft Easter egg designs

With the Easter holidays coming up, Hama beads are a great craft and activity to keep the children occupied for a little while. If you are trying to get your children to take a break from playing Minecraft on their screen, then these Minecraft themed Easter egg designs are a great way to keep them busy along with improving fine motor and concentration skills.

My Minecraft themed Hama bead designs are created using a square pegboard and the midi Hama beads, which are the size of bead that are most commonly available. You can find links to the products required at the bottom of this post. 

Most of the bead colours that you will need should be found in a mix of solid beads (different packs vary with regard to the colours available) but you will probably need to purchase the flesh coloured beads separately. Hobbycraft also sell their own range of fuse beads called Picture Beads which are good quality and also work well - and here you can buy a pack of more varied flesh toned beads.

Below are the patterns that I used for my Minecraft Easter eggs. Made on the square pegboard they are quite simple and older children should be able to follow them without too much trouble. 

There are designs for a pig, skeleton, player, creeper, enderman and sheep. 

When it comes to ironing, children will need the help of an adult. If you are new to Hama beads I have written a post with some ironing tips for Hama beads which I would recommend giving a read. I like to iron my designs on both sides so that the beads are firmly fused together, and I like to iron the designs quite lightly so that you can still see the holes in the beads. 

When complete, these Minecraft themed Easter egg decorations could have ribbon or string added to be hung from an Easter tree or turned into simple magnets. 

Minecraft crafts using Hama beads

My children love Minecraft and they love Hama beads - and Hama beads are the perfect craft material for reproducing the blocky feel of Minecraft! So I'm sharing some brilliant Minecraft crafts made using Hama beads. Of course you can also use Perler beads or any other type of melty bead to make these designs.

We made these Minecraft Hama bead keyrings to go in party bags for my son's Minecraft party a few years ago, and they were a big hit! You can find some designs similar to the ones that we used here - Minecraft designs for Hama beads - and they can also be adapted for all sorts of crafts. For example we used similar designs to make square magnets to sell at a car boot sale.

You can also find some different Minecraft keychain designs in the video below, these keyrings are all different types of weapon. To make similar keyrings you can find a free pattern from Red Ted Art here - Hama bead Minecraft sword pattern.

I love this Minecraft sign using Hama beads which makes a great room decoration. You could also adapt the letters to spell out your child's name as a sign for their door.

I used the small Easter egg board to make these Minecraft Christmas baubles with Hama beads which I have also re-purposed at Easter for our Easter tree. They are based on the square designs above and are really simple to make up.

These 3D Minecraft figures are amazing! Even though they look complicated, all you need is a square board to make the pieces which are slotted together, and the finished figures have moveable arms too. You could also have a go at a 3D Hama bead Ocelot to keep them company.

Finally, here you can see pretty much every item from Minecraft, replicated in Hama beads. Many of these would make great magnets or keyrings, or card toppers, embellishments, jewellery - so many ways that you could display them!

Happy Minecraft crafting!

If your children love Minecraft, you might also enjoy my round up of  Minecraft crafts for children.

Book review - Minecraft STEM Challenge books

My children are massive fans of Minecraft - I think that they'd play it all day if they could! Personally I'd much rather they chose to play Minecraft than some of the other games that are out there - they play beautifully together as well as following their own projects, and they have both created some really amazing structures. So I knew that they would love these two new Minecraft STEM Challenge books from Carlton - Build a Theme Park and Build a City.

These books claim to be a first-of-a-kind addition to the Minecraft market, and they are certainly very different to the other Minecraft books that they own. They are large format, packed with colourful pictures and texts, and easy to dip in and out of.

Each book takes you through the step-by-step construction of a Minecraft City or Theme Park. You can follow the instructions to create an exact copy, with directions given for overall layout and how to make each building. Or if you prefer you can copy the individual buildings, or just take inspiration from the creations and come up with your own designs. Alongside the instructions you can read about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics in the real world, then put this learning to use in the game. For example calculating the total area needed to house a theme park ride, or learning how gravity and friction will affect the speed of a roller coaster.

Mia chose to work with the Build a City book, and decided to start by building a tower block. She wanted to come up with her own design for the city as a whole, but chose to copy the instructions for the tower block from the book. I sat down with her and helped her to work through them step-by-step. The book explained why we needed to use particular materials, and there was lots of maths involved in calculating where to place the blocks to form the sides to make sure that everything lined up. There's also a calculation to work out how many families you can house in the tower block based on the number of floors that you build. It was a lot of fun!

I left her to it and came back to find that she'd gone on to build her own versions of other structures from the book - this time taking inspiration from the book but using her own designs. She had chosen to use different materials and I was really impressed to hear her telling me about why she'd chosen particular materials. She built a park with different rides in it and some shops.

Harry pounced on the Theme Park book and quickly set to making his own park. He's built roller coasters in Minecraft before, and was eager to first come up with his own projects rather than follow the ones in the book. He designed his own bumper car ride after seeing a similar ride in the book that talked about using ice to make it slippery and I was really impressed with how well he'd designed it.

He copied his design for the Ferris Wheel from the book as he found it helpful to have something to copy - he says he can't make circles in Minecraft very well! He was very proud of it and I love the detail, it's definitely something that he would have struggled to make alone, but I wouldn't be surprised if it inspires him to make lots of similar designs using it as a jumping off point.

I was really impressed with both of these books, and I can see that my children are going to be referring to them and being inspired by them for a long time to come. There are several other books available in the series and I'm definitely going to be putting them on the Christmas list!

We received copies of these books to review. These books will be published on 6th September 2018.

Some great Minecraft crafts for children

My children love Minecraft, and they would play it all day if I let them. But now and then I like to drag them away from the screens for some crafting. There are some great ideas out there, and so I thought I'd pull together some different Minecraft themed crafts.

I recently helped my son to make a selection of Hama bead Minecraft keyrings to give out to his friends. There are lots of different designs online which you can use, and I found a good selection here - Minecraft designs for Hama beads.

The pixellated design of the Minecraft world lends itself perfectly to Hama or perler bead crafting, and there are so many different elements in the game that you could use. These Minecraft keychains are made to look like some of the different swords in Minecraft, another really simple yet effective design that can be customised to use your favourite colours.

Photo - Red Ted Art

All of these Hama bead pieces could be used to make magnets or as an embellishment for a card. I think they'd also look very cool mounted in a shadow box frame for the wall.

Talking of shadow boxes, a piece of Minecraft inspired decor that I love is this Minecraft inspired wall art. It's really easy to make and it looks amazing, it would be perfect for a child's bedroom, or to hang in the place where Minecraft is usually played.

Photo - The Gingerbread House

Some other great Minecraft wall decorations are these Large Wooden Minecraft Characters which are really easy to make and only require a few materials. There are lots of other Minecraft room decor ideas over there too, it's definitely worth a look if you really want to indulge your child's love of Minecraft!

Going back to Hama beads, if you are looking for something a little more complicated I really love this Perler Bead Minecraft Moneybox. I always love to make something which has a practical purpose, and it looks amazing.

Photo - Red Ted Art

For my son's Minecraft party I put together some Minecraft themed party bags which I was very proud of. One simple craft which was very popular was these Minecraft bookmarks. They are just printed, laminated, and a coordinating ribbon added to the bottom. The printables that I used below are sadly no longer available, but you can easily make your own using graphics found online. They'd make a lovely gift for a friend!

Another great party bag or present idea would be a Minecraft in a Jar gift. You just need a few little toys and sweets in Minecraft colours gathered together in a decorated jar.

Photo - The Gingerbread House

If you children want to act out their Minecraft games in real life, it's easy to make them some simple props, and they also make great decorations for a Minecraft themed party. You can find all sorts of ideas here - DIY Minecraft Party - Swords, Torches, Pickaxes and More!

Or if you want something for the children to work on by themselves, show them this Easy Minecraft Bookmark video from Red Ted Art, and let them have a go!

Finally, if you want to take your love of Minecraft into the kitchen, why not make some Gingerbread Iron Golem Biscuits. They look delicious, and this would also be an ideal activity for a themed Minecraft day!

Photo - The Gingerbread House

You might also like my blog post about the themed Minecraft party that I held for my son, it was a big success! And if you have a young Minecraft fan in the house, you might like my list of gift ideas for a Minecraft fan.

Minecraft challenges for Easter

My children love Minecraft. They could play for hours (and I must admit that they often do) and although they are full of their own ideas they love it when I come up with suggestions for them. With the Easter holiday approaching, with their help I have put together a list of Easter themed Minecraft challenges to keep any Minecraft fans busy!

* If you have your own world in Minecraft that you play in regularly, decorate it for Easter. Use pastel coloured blocks and plant lots of Spring flowers.

* My children love using the blocks to create pixel art. You can do a Google image search for Easter pixel art designs, or try something like my Hama bead Easter egg design. You could make Easter eggs, Easter chicks or the Easter bunny, or like my son just make a big sign reading 'Happy Easter'

* Build a large Easter egg with something inside it - maybe a chick or some Easter sweet treats.

* Come up with an Easter egg hunt for another player. There are lots of different ways that you could do this. The most simple would be to hide Easter eggs around your world. My son created the egg hunt below using item frames to display different coloured eggs - I've been told that there are ten to find in this picture, but I can't spot them all!

* Another Easter egg hunt idea is to create a trail following clues, similar to one that you might make for children around the house. It's best to have a defined area for the hunt so that the player doesn't stray too far. You can use signs to write the clues, and hide the eggs inside crates.

* Build an Easter trail, where a fellow player can follow a path through trees or buildings, spotting eggs and flowers as they go.

* Build an Easter themed train or boat ride which takes the user through an Easter themed wonderland.

* Come up with the best way of making a 3D egg and then create different versions using different colours and patterns.

I hope that you enjoyed this list and found something that inspired you to do some Easter creating in Minecraft - if you have any other ideas I'd love to hear them!

You might also like my list of Minecraft Christmas challenges.

Minecraft Christmas baubles with Hama beads

I love making Christmas decorations, and one way to persuade the children to do some crafting with me is if I can give it a Minecraft theme! So we sat down to make some Minecraft themed Hama bead baubles for the Christmas tree.

These Hama bead baubles are made using the Hama bead large square pegboard (affiliate link). I do have several circular pegboards, but I thought that using the square board would be easier to make the blocky characters. I made six baubles - a Creeper, a Sheep, a Pig, Steve, an Enderman and a Skeleton. It's easy to make all different characters, I found that you just need to work out the best place to put the eyes and then you can work from there.

Once ironed I used some coloured string to make a hanging loop for the bauble. You should be able to use a needle to thread the string through a couple of the holes in the top of your design, and then they are ready to be hung on the tree!

After Hama bead designs have been ironed I always place them underneath something heavy while they cool so that they remain flat. You can read some more ironing tips for Hama beads here.

If you are looking for more Christmas crafts using Hama beads you can find my Christmas Hama bead crafts round up here.

And if you enjoy crafting with Hama beads, you can find all my Hama bead crafts here. 

Some Minecraft challenges for children this Christmas

Since my children were introduced to Minecraft a couple of years ago it has quickly become their absolute favourite activity. They play separately and together, and I'm always impressed with the complicated things that they build. With the Christmas holidays approaching I'm sure that their Minecraft time will increase, and they helped me to put together this list of Christmas related Minecraft builds and challenges in case there are any other Minecraft loving children looking for inspiration!

* If you have a world in Minecraft that you add to then decorate it for the holidays. Make a Christmas tree or two and string up decorations, add wreaths to the front doors, piles of presents under trees.

* Build a full size Gingerbread House and decorate it both inside and outside.

* Build a giant snowman, don't forget to add a hat, scarf and gloves. You could even build a family of snowmen!

* Make a Christmas themed train or sleigh ride. Theme along the track with snowy decorations, a Christmas village, a forest of Christmas trees. Maybe even Father Christmas in his grotto at the end!

* Build a Christmas village with lots of little decorated huts and Christmas trees
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* Recreate a Christmas market with lots of different stalls, an ice rink, a seating area for food and drink and maybe a ride or two.

* Design some snowflakes, you could have a go at some really large, intricate ones.

* Build Santa's workshop - a factory for making the toys, accommodation for the elves, a shed to keep the sleigh, stables for the reindeer and so on.

* Build a huge Christmas tree with tinsel, lights, baubles and other decorations, and don't forget a huge pile of presents to go underneath.

* Build a winter wonderland through the forest.

* Try some pixel art with some huge Christmas themed designs, maybe some of your favourite Minecraft characters with a festive twist like a Santa hat.

* Build a fireplace for Father Christmas to come down, don't forget to add stockings.

* Build a ski slope, you could also add a lift to take skiers to the top and chalets.

* Build an igloo, experiment with different shapes and designs.

Happy Christmas Minecraft-ing!

Minecraft Day

If you've been reading my blog for a while you might remember that one of the things I like to do with the children in the holidays is to hold a Themed Day. This is a day where we choose a theme, and I come up with some crafts and activities related to that theme to entertain the children. It's been a while since our last one but the children are always asking for another, so we have a couple planned for the summer. Now the children are old enough to choose their own themes, and so Mia chose Minecraft Day and Harry chose Egyptian Day, which will be taking place in a couple of weeks. You can find links to our previous themed days at the bottom of this post.

Now when it comes to Minecraft Day, the obvious activity for the day is to play Minecraft. If I let them I think that the children would quite happily play Minecraft all day, so I was keen to come up with some other things to do that would keep them away from the screen! In the past I've always set up the table in the kitchen with some themed bits and pieces. I've been working quite a lot in the evenings lately and so I wasn't going to bother this time, but Harry asked me specifically whether I was going to as I was putting him to bed, so how could I refuse! I just piled up a few paper crafted blocks (more on those later) and some toys and books that were lying about, and put these cool Minecraft sunglasses that he got free with a magazine onto one of Mia's teddies.

We did start off by loading up the game. I found a brilliant Minecraft scavenger hunt that I could print out. The children can play Minecraft together from their different computers so they worked together to try and find all the items on the list and place them into a treasure chest. This actually took them a lot longer than I expected and they didn't manage to complete it during the day so it will keep them busy for ages, and they absolutely loved it! It was a completely new idea to them and I was really pleased with how much they enjoyed it, I need to do some research and come up with some more hunts for them to do together!

Then we turned off the computer and set to making some Minecraft biscuits. I have a very basic recipe for shortbread that I've been making for the children for years, all the way back to those very first iced biscuits. The difference was that this time Harry was able to measure out all the ingredients himself, much easier for me! We don't have a square cookie cutter so he used a knife to cut out some squares. When they had cooled we iced them with bright green icing (gel colours work best for this) and topped with green sprinkles.

After lunch we moved onto some quiet activities. I already mentioned the papercrafting - Harry has been given some fab Minecraft paper crafting activity sets. The sets come with lots of pre-cut printed shapes that you can pop out and assemble. Some, like the blocks, are very easy, and others are a bit more challenging. He's built some of them but has plenty left to go. He spent ages making some up, and then Mia played with them. We also found some printable Minecraft paper crafting on the Twinkl website which are available for subscribers. The Simple Adventurer Paper Model really was very simple and Mia could put him together easily. The Block Pig Paper Model is also very sweet, and Twinkl has a wide range of other Minecraft based paper crafting projects, including lots of different types of blocks.

Also from Twinkl the children enjoyed the Block Adventurer Addition Mosaic Activity Sheets, and there are subtraction sheets too. Also a Platinum Plus subscription resource, they are a grid of sums, and when you colour in the squares according to the answers a picture is revealed. There are also lots of free Minecraft colouring pages readily available online.

Then we had a long session of play with some of our Minecraft Lego sets. Harry has a few of these that are kept in a separate box to the rest of the Lego (I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to organising the Lego!) so they were able to spread the pieces out all over the floor and Harry concentrated on building the sets while Mia took the little figures out and played with those.

Finally I let them back onto the computers. I wanted to give their play a little structure so I downloaded this free Minecraft Challenge printable. It's January themed so the ideas are all winter and snowy related, but that didn't matter to the children! They had fun coming up with some new builds, and then they had another go at their Minecraft scavenger hunt.

When I was researching Minecraft build ideas I didn't find as many as I was expecting, so I'm going to ask the children to help me to come up with some different ideas that we can share on the blog to inspire other Minecrafters!

We really enjoyed our Minecraft day, it reminded me how much the children do love our themed days, I definitely need to plan a few more before they get too old!

For some more Minecraft themed ideas you might like my post with some Ideas for a Minecraft Themed Party. I also have a post with some tips on How to hold a themed day for children. And if you have a Minecraft player in the family you might enjoy my list of gift ideas for a Minecraft fan.

Our themed days so far:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Dinosaur Day
Under the Sea Day
Beach Day
Disney Frozen Day (a guest post from my sister)
Roman Day
Transport Day
Australia Day

I have been provided with a Platinum Plus subscription to Twinkl in exchange for sharing their resources on my blog from time to time.

Christmas gift ideas for a Minecraft fan

Since Minecraft entered our house just over a year ago, it's fair to say that first Harry and now Mia are reasonably obsessed with it. They play in creative mode and build all sorts of things, sometimes in their own games and sometimes together, and I really love seeing the creative ideas that they come up with. With Christmas approaching I've been having a look around for a few Minecraft related gift ideas, and I hope that you find this post helpful if you share your home or life with a Minecraft fan.

Of course the children aren't allowed to play Minecraft all day, but I'm pretty sure that some days they spend a great deal of time thinking about it, and researching and planning what they want to build next. Harry gets a lot of inspiration from the Minecraft magazines that I buy him occasionally. His favourite is Mineworld Magazine, although he doesn't get it often as it's quite pricey, a subscription would be a great gift!

He also has quite a few books. For a quick easy read that he still returns to again and again he enjoys Stampy Cat: Stampy's Lovely Book, and he always enjoys reading the latest Minecraft annual which is available now - Minecraft Annual 2020 and very reasonably priced.

A thicker and very in depth reference book is the Minecraft: Blockopedia. It is stored in a sturdy presentation box and contains information about every single type of block that you can play with in Minecraft. It looks very complicated to me, but Harry loves it and his copy is very well thumbed. It's also quite educational - he knows all about different rocks and minerals which he has learned from this book!

If your child is just starting out playing Minecraft, Mojang do a range of official guides, and the Minecraft: Beginner's Handbook is a very good place to start. There are several more books in the series too which make great companions.

One thing that Harry is lacking and which will be featuring on his Christmas list this year is Minecraft apparel. There's a huge range available, and as he's a little short on nightwear I have my eye on a Minecraft dressing gown or a set of Stampy Pajamas. I've also seen some of his friends in one of these Eat Sleep Mine Repeat hoodies which come in a huge range of colours so you can find one in your child's favourite style.

When not playing Minecraft on the PC the children love role-playing Minecraft games. Harry has a few of these little Minecraft toys like this Minecraft Steve Action Figure, fun to play with and keep on display.

Crafty children will love the range of Minecraft paper crafting sets that are available. We have several of the kits, and I particularly love the look of the Minecraft Paper Craft Overworld Deluxe Pack which comes with over 90 pieces. Harry has had fun making stop animation videos with these sets.

Finally, if you are feeling crafty yourself you can easily make some little Minecraft themed gifts. In my blog post with some ideas for Minecraft party bags you can find out how to make Minecraft bookmarks and notebooks, or perhaps some Minecraft keyrings. Great for children to make and give to their school friends! And if you want to decorate your home this Christmas you might want to have a go at the Minecraft Hama bead Christmas baubles!

Ideas for a themed Minecraft party

The other week Harry turned 7, and for his party this year I offered to host a Minecraft themed party. He was delighted with the idea, and so I did the best that I could to give him a fun party! It was the first time that we'd held a party for friends at our house so I was a little bit daunted, especially when we ended up with 16 children coming round, but it went really well, I had some great helpers, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

The planning started well before Christmas when I began coming up with ideas for Minecraft party bags. I was a little stumped at first, but once I got started I came up with lots of ideas, so many that you can find them all in a separate post - ideas for Minecraft party bag fillers.

The day before, we began decorating. I saw these fab balloon and crepe paper spiders over at Adventure Mummy and made one for the hallway and one over our fireplace.

I also bought green crepe paper in two different shades and cut long strips which I hung from our living room and study doors to make vines. These were very popular and after the party have been transferred to the children's bedrooms where they are still hanging! On the door you can also see the fab Minecraft pig which my friend's husband printed out for us. We used him to play Pin the Tail on the Pig with named strips of pink paper. I also hung bunches or green and black balloons around the house.

The part of the party that I found the most difficult was coming up with games to play. As well as the Pin the Tail on the Pig I did a pass the parcel and I made up a scavenger hunt by printing out and laminating Minecraft pictures which the children had to find hidden around the house. This was really popular!

We also played the chocolate game, where the children sit in a circle around a bar of chocolate and take it in turns to roll dice. If they rolled a six they had to put on a hat, scarf and gloves, then use a knife and fork to eat as much chocolate as they could. They managed really well with it!

I also printed out some Minecraft colouring sheets and left them on the coffee table with some colouring pencils and crayons (not felt tips!) and they were really popular. In our downstairs study I put out our large boxes of Lego and Duplo and this was also a good idea. It gave some of the quieter little ones somewhere that they could retreat to if they needed some peace.

For food and drink I went for standard party buffet fare. I did buy some cookies as I know that they are in Minecraft, and I also found some boxes of snacks in little block shapes like flapjacks which fitted the theme.

For the birthday cake, my friend made Harry this magnificent Minecraft cake. It's covered in little squares of fondant and it must have taken her ages! On top of the cake is a little Minecraft figure which fitted perfectly.

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