An interview with Riku a Hama bead artist from Riku's raving Hama Revolution

An interview with Riku, a Hama bead artist from Riku's raving Hama Revolution

Hello everyone,
This week I had the opportunity to interview Riku from Riku's raving Hama Revolution
Riku is a very talented Hama bead artist and I really recommend checking out their Facebook page which can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rikus-raving-Hama-Revolution/713045415459992
The page is full of pictures of projects big and small which are sure to bring a smile to your face, particularly to fans of games, cartoons and all things cute.

So with no further ado lets get this interview underway:

Gemma: Hi Riku it is lovely to get this opportunity to ask you a few questions. My first question is how did you get into making projects with Hama beads?

Riku: I got into hama beads when I was 12 years old by a odd random chance of fate as my mum got a big huge tub of beads with every colour of the rainbow in it ...needless to say at first I would only make tiny tiny projects...maybe a star and even then I couldn't iron anything alone since I wasn't very good at ironing in general... I would try and introduce as many of my friends to hama as I could but they just said its boring and lame ....so I continued to learn how to improve all self-taught (I never had a hama teacher)

Gemma: Do you have a favourite project you have worked on?

Riku: I have a few favourite projects is the Pokemon montage I had made clearly to celebrate the release of Pokemon alpha/omega, ruby/sapphire on 3DS (I'm a huge pokemon fan) my second favourite is a project I'm currently still working on. So far its taken me 3 months to even get to the point I am (26 peg boards and over 50,000 beads ) so far and I'm only half way through making it....its gonna be the biggest project I've ever, ever made and I dread to think the amounts of hours I have yet to put into it, I'm a huge fan of FF10 so it was my little tribute to it as 1 of my favourite Final Fantasy of alllll time.

Here is the final Fantasy work in progress. Riku has even gone to the trouble of making the Japanese characters into hama beads, now that's attention to detail! Also in this work in progress shot is an opportunity to take a peek at just how many boards this piece of work spans, this is an enormous piece of work, as Riku mentions its currently over 50,000 beads! (I think I'd need a lie down after all that)

For further updates on this piece and other works be sure to like Rikus Facebook page. I can't wait to see what its like when its done.

 

Here is the epic Pokémon themed piece, I can see why this is Rikus favourite piece so far. Theres so much detail here and it looks massive!

Gemma: There are loads of cute projects on your Facebook page and some of them are quite large how do you keep yourself motivated to finish them? Particularly when there is a large area to fill with one colour?

Riku: I love working on huge hama projects as for me hama is very very therapeutic and it helps me to just forget everything. I know some people joke saying "how do you have the patience" but to me I just zone out....music and binge watching on Netflix helps a lot when you got to struggles with the never ending battle of shading.

Gemma: You know that's just how I end up getting through filling in a really large area of cross stitch. I think in these times having music is the best way to get through.

Gemma: How did you come up with the name for your Facebook page?

Riku: I was struggling with a name for a lot of time, at first only my closest friends on my personal profile page even knew I did hama (I kept it as a little secret) as I didn't think it was the same art worthy as say drawing, but over the years I know hama is a much more demanding skill to learn, a friend mentioned to me that all my art I'd done was very different to your average hama artist. I liked to be brave and make huge projects so I thought hama revolution would be a good name since revolution means change.

The following questions are from my special guest interviewer Chloe, my beautiful niece who is just starting to learn the art of Hama beads after getting a kit for Christmas. She is very excited to be able to ask an experienced Hama bead artist a couple of questions.

Chloe: Hi Riku, When you have finished a Hama bead project how do you like to display the finished piece?

Riku:  Sadly when ever I finish a piece it normally gets put under the sofa in a art wallet. I dont really frame massive pieces as I sell most of them but with my little mini hama projects they are perfect to frame and very easy to do it unlike midi beads which can be difficult to frame due to the thickness of the beads.


Chloe: Do you have any tips and tricks that you know now that you wish you knew when you were just starting out making Hama bead creations?

Riku: For a new hama beader I would say if you're gonna iron a piece the iron must be on the hottest temperature it can possibly go otherwise the beads wont melt and wont become a solid piece of flat plastic....and iron it on both sides (this is everyones mistaken they never iron both sides which leads to fragile pieces) always use a neat new piece of ironing paper as old paper can because creased and folded ..if you use creased old paper for ironing it will imprint on the beads whilst you iron them, timing is a key thing for hama, you cant rush a ironing job.

Gemma: Thank you so much Riku for taking the time to tell us all about your fabulous art pieces.

Chloe: Thank you Riku, especially for the ironing tip, I'll remind Gemma to iron both sides next time. :)

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