Hama bead Roman mosaic border designs for children

Recently I held a Roman themed day, and one of our activities was making Roman mosaics from Hama beads. We do love Hama beads, and they seemed like the perfect way to recreate a Roman mosaic! I left my son to come up with his own design, but I knew that I wanted to revisit the idea myself and come up with some Roman mosaic designs. Here are the patterns that I came up with, based on real mosaic photographs found in a guide book for Fishbourne Roman Palace.

Firstly I looked at circular designs. I thought that these would make a nice frame, either as a standalone design with a photograph or drawn picture inside, or else a child could come up with their own Hama bead picture to fill the centre circle. (The dot in the centre is just to help with positioning the design centrally on the large circular peg board).

Once I have ironed my larger Hama bead pieces I find it a good idea to leave them for a few minutes between two cork heatproof mats with the iron rested on top as a weight. This ensures that as they cool down they stay nice and flat, as there can be a tendency

for them to bend.

Above is my finished frame. The mosaic picture inside the frame on the right is a postcard that I bought from the archaeological museum in Naples, it's a mosaic found at Pompeii. Below is the finished frame around a picture of a mosaic from Fishbourne Roman Palace. I think it looks pretty good!

Next I had a go with the large square peg board and made some borders, again inspired by real Roman mosaics from my books. I think that these designs would also make nice borders for a frame around a mosaic design or picture.

I think that the designs look good with two contrasting colours. For my designs I've used brown and flesh coloured Hama beads, but you could also use black (or any other darker colour) and white.

If you enjoy using Hama beads to make patterns rather than pictures you might also like my Hama bead Rangoli patterns which I designed for Diwali. I have created large Hama bead Rangoli and small Hama bead Rangoli.

You can also find all my Hama bead projects for both children and adults on my Hama bead page.