Embellished hama-ami motifs

I keep rummaging through my saved photos. These two little floral motifs are a couple of little beaded things I found among the files. Above is a simple five-petal hana-ami motif with a beaded outline, made using 4 mm round beads and 11/0 Toho seed beads.Use six beads/"petals" and you get a flat flower, use five and you get a more dimensional motif. How dimensional depends on the shape and size of the beads of cause.

This is a puffy hana-ami motif (a doubled version of the first one) made using 6 mm round beads. I did quite a few back when I happened to mention these on a beading forum and many of the other (seed)beaders got hooked on making these. The basic version, that is, not this one where I've added 4 mm rounds and seed beads between each section.

I think I like the small flower "button" better than the chubby snowflake. But you have to try all versions you come up with, don't you? (Granted, I don't have to blog about the ones I'm not satisfied with, but somehow I feel it's just more honest to show some of them too when I make a summary of my experiments... A full sampler, including both successful and failed versions. And if nothing else it might deter others from making the same mistakes I did.)

To read more about "puffy hana-ami motifs" (hana-amipuffar), se my earlier post, which has links to tuts.

A pearl ball

This was a first try at making a puffy beaded bead along the line of the puffy hana-ami motifs I wrote about. The first pattern I came across for making these five-petal beaded beads was based on pearls rather than glass or crystal beads with seeds in between.

I used rice-shaped grey peacock FW pearls to make the doubled flower motifs and then added nugget pearls to cover the visible threads a bit. Because the thread was a bit too visible, not least since the pearls aren't perfectly uniform. Not the prettiest pearl ball, but the one that got be interested in making more hana-amipuffar.

Puffy hana-ami motifs

I don't really remember what made me start talking about this variation of hana-ami. But in doing so I inspired both myself and other beaders at a foroum to start making "hana-amipuffar". The one above is one of my favourites: note how the square bicone beads gave it a star shape.

I rather like the one below as well. This time, to vary the motif a bit, I added picots between the outer swaros. I had bought the 6 mm crystal beadss more or less by accident -- I'm not a big fan of white opal AB -- so I was quite pleased that they could be used for something.


What I like about these puffy things is that they are so versatile. You can vary the shape, size and number of beads, add embellishment and link several motifs together.

Five petals is good amount as it make the motif cupped already when making the first side, but still enough petals for it took look like a flower. You can make these with 6, 4 or 3 "petals" aswell, as shown in the photo below. More beads = flatter, fewer beads = more puffed up.



Unfortunately I don't have photos of it, but I have also made these using only round beads aswell as using FW pearls (rice and nuggets).


How to make it
If you're interested in making similar beaded beads or pendants (or whatever you think they are), I've got a few links of interest. Note that the motifs can be made in slighly different ways depending on who you ask. And while some use a single-needle method, others use double needles. I use the method described at Smyckestillverkning iFokus. Similar motifs are also made in projects at Rollendes Atelier and Beadjewelrymaking.com. Diane FitzGerald has instructions for her smaller version of them published in Beadwork Creates Beaded Beads, there called Star Flower (you can find a sample page with photo of them at her website, pdf format).

An example of how you can link together motifs can also be found here.

How to make flat hana-ami motifs can be learnt e.g. at Around the Beading Table and from Chris Prussing/Bead-Patterns.com (both free). You can also stitch together two flat hana-ami motifs like this.

I've written more about hana-ami and different variations on the stitch here.