Fuse beads

Turn a photo into a fuse bead pattern

A fuse-bead pattern is a peg grid plus a short color list. Set the width to the pegboard you own, cut the colors until the picture is still the picture, and place one bead per filled cell. The page doesn't melt plastic for you, and it doesn't know which brand is in your drawer.

Perler, Hama, and Artkal are trademarks of their owners. Pixelate Tools isn't affiliated with them. People search those names because the pegboards are real. The tool's Palette menu defaults to Perler Midi community codes from the beadcolors project (MIT; see site notices). You can switch to Hama Midi, Artkal S 5mm, or a plain 32-color reference set without product codes. Hold a bead next to the swatch. If your red is darker than the swatch, still use your red for that symbol, and write your bag's code on the printed legend if it differs. The chart won't invent a code it doesn't have.

Start on a 29 board

The fuse bead converter opens at width 29, square on, 8 colors, dithering off. 29×29 is 841 pegs. That's a full evening for a simple shape and a long weekend for a face. If your board is 29 by 29, leave Square checked so a portrait is padded into the square instead of becoming 29×40 and hanging off the pegs. You'll get empty rows. Empty means no bead, not a white bead.

Eight colors is the start, not the law. A logo might need 5. A pet photo might need 12 before the eyes exist. Every color is a bowl on the table. If you can't point at each bowl and name the symbol, you've too many. Dithering off is deliberate. A dithered cheek is a checker of two bead colors. It can look good in a game sprite and terrible as a craft, because your hand places every speck. If you want that look, you already know you want it. Otherwise leave the menu on Off.

Make the photo behave

Crop tight. A bead pattern of a person plus a whole room is a bead pattern of a room. Raise contrast so the outline is darker than the fill. Then look at the symbol table. If the outline is broken, paint it back with the darkest swatch. Click the swatch, then the cells. Those edits last until you move width or colors.

Backgrounds: if the wall used 400 beads to say nothing, crop, or drop the corner color so the wall becomes empty pegs. Shaped pieces (a heart, a head, a controller) look better with empties than with a rectangle of cream beads you only placed to fill the board.

From chart to pegs

Read the letters the way the symbol chart guide describes. Print. Place one row. Check it against the paper before the next row. A 29-wide row is easy to shift by one peg, and the error stacks. The legend counts tell you how many beads of each color to pour out, which is the whole of how many beads you need.

Ironing, tape method, which side faces up: follow the instruction sheet that came with your beads. Heat and paper type differ by brand, and a website shouldn't guess the temperature for your iron. The pattern's job ends at "this peg, this color."

If you're not beading and you only wanted a counted grid for something else (a tile, a LED panel, a drawing), the same cells exist on the main converter without bead names. Use large PNG plus the grid. The copy by hand page is that workflow.

When bead conversion is a bad idea

Skip full-room photos, smooth gradients without placing two bead colors per cheek, or trademark characters you can't reproduce. Match peg size to the palette; mini plastic isn't Midi codes.

Worked evening plan for 29×29

Crop to one object. Width 29, Square on, 8 colors, dither off. Contrast until outline reads. Print legend and chart. Sort bowls by symbol. Place row 1, verify, continue. Shopping list from the same frozen export. Board math: pegboard sizes. Brand honesty: Perler, Hama, Artkal palettes.

Questions

Keep going

• Fuse bead converter
• Count the beads
• Read the symbol chart
• Copy a grid by hand

Updated 30 September 2026