Easy Perler Bead Pattern Maker Tutorial 10

Full instructions on an easy to use Perler Bead pattern maker.  It’s so fun to come up with your own Perler Bead designs.

I’m in several Perler Bead Facebook groups.   These groups are great for sharing, asking questions, and inspiration.  

The one question I see time and time again is:  “Can someone make this image into a pattern for me?”  

This constant need for Perler Bead patterns prompted me to share one way of designing your own Perler Bead design.  It’s fairly easy to use this Perler Bead pattern maker, and you can use any image you desire.  

Now, if you are want a pattern for something simple, you can check out my resource for the 10 best places to find Perler Bead patterns.  BUT if you’ve searched and searched and still can’t find that perfect Perler Bead design, make it yourself using Hobby-family.dk.  

There is definitely a learning curve for using this resource to make Perler Bead patterns, but it’s worth a try if you are interesting in creating your own one of a kind Perler Bead designs.

Pros of using Hobby-Family to create Perler Bead designs

• It’s super easy to use.
• It’s free.
• It has the most current Perler Bead colors.
• It tells you how many beads you will need of each color.
• You can adjust the palate to include Hama, Artkal, or Nabbi beads.
• You can edit your pattern after it’s generated.
• It lets you know exactly how many you need of each color.  
• You can download a copy of the pattern you’ve created in either pdf form or in png form.

Cons of using Hobby-Family to generate Perler Bead patterns

• It is only for use on square pegboards
• The Perler Bead pattern it generates may be way larger than you can ever create.
• It can be time consuming to edit your patterns.

Creating Perler Bead Patterns

I’m going to take you step by step through using Hobby-family’s Perler Bead pattern maker.  

For ease of writing this tutorial, I’ll use a fairly simple image to create my Perler Bead design.  It’s Game Boy clip art that I found on a free for commercial use website. Don’t ya think this will make a great Perler Bead piece? 

First things first. Using your favorite web browser, go to Hobby-Family.dk.  If you use that link it will take you directly to the Perler Designer.  

The image below is what you’ll see when you first get to this Perler Bead generator.  Yes, the writing is cramped on screen, but that’s ok.  It’s not the design of the webpage that matters, right?  It’s the results that I care about.  

You will need to upload the image and make a few choices.

First you’ll be asked if it’s a photo.   It’s a simple yes or no question.  Since my picture is of clip art I’m going to select no.  That sets the pattern maker to make a Perler Bead pattern at actual size.   You can adjust that size later on the page.   

The next thing you will have to do is select the bead size.   There are two options.   Mini beads and midi beads.  The pegboards are different sizes for each, that’s why there are 2 options.  Midi beads are the standard size beads, that’s what I use and that’s what I selected.  

After you select the size of bead, you can then select the type of pegboard.  For the midi beads, there are two options, the standard 29 x 29 size board and the superboard.  There are more options of board sizes for mini beads.   Select the one that fits your needs.

Next you’ll need to select the pattern width.   With clipart, the default is actual size.  

I don’t want mine at actual size.   

I tried it.  The pattern was 28 rows and 17 columns.   It used almost 90 thousand gray Perler Beads and over 40 thousand black Perler Beads.  NEVER going to happen.

Instead of using the actual size, I changed mine to 1 column wide.   You do that by using the drop down that says “Max Pattern Width”.   It’s fun to play around with this option to see the different detailing you get depending onthe number of rows.   Obviously, the more columns you choose, the more detailed your Perler Bead pattern will become.

Next you will need to select the brand of bead you will be using.   Hobby-Family’s Perler Bead designer defaults to Perler Beads, so you don’t need to make a selection if that’s what you are using.   If you are using a different brand of beads click on the words “Adjust Bead Palette”  It will bring up the image below.   You can just select the type of beads you are using at the top of the screen.   Or if you want to get more specific in your color selection, you can select individual colors.  

The last variable on the site is “Adjust Image Color.”  It’s kind of like a mini photo editor where you can adjust the colors, hue and contrast of the image.  You can skip this step if your image is already the way you like it.  

Each time you make a change to one of the above main options you will need to select the box to “Update Design.”

Once you click “Update Design” the Perler Bead generator is going to work it’s magic.  The more pegboards the design uses, the longer this can take.   

When it’s done, you’ll see an image of the Perler Bead pattern, the colors needed, the number of each color needed, and the size of the design.  There are even handy links where you can buy the colors you need from Bakers’ Kids Crafts.  I’ve never ordered from them, but I hear they are pretty awesome.

Here’s what I got with my Game Boy clip art.  

Nope it’s not perfect, but it looks pretty darn good.

Now you may get lucky and get the perfect pattern right off the bat.   I never have.   BUT you can thankfully adjust the pattern using the palette that you’ve selected.   

Adjusting your Perler Bead Pattern

This step can be really easy or it can be really hard.  It depends on the number of pegboards your Perler Bead design is using.   

Let’s start with really easy, since I purposely used this Game Boy clip art because it was simple.  

When you look at the Perler Bead design that was created you should be able to see the areas where you will need to make some changes.

To make changes to the pattern, click on “edit pattern”.  It’s directly under the image you uploaded.  

You’ll then need to scroll down to the bottom of the page.   Check out the image below to see how it looks with my Game Boy Perler Bead pattern.  

The first thing you might notice is that there are no gridlines representing each of the beads like there are in the pattern that was created.  I’ll be the first to admit, that stinks.  It also makes it difficult to make changes with detailed patterns.  

It may be difficult, but it’s not impossible.  So, to edit your pattern, you need to click on one of the colors under the words “bead palette,” then you click on the part of the image below where you want to update your Perler Bead pattern.   

You do this square by square, color by color until you have the pattern that you want.   Finally, you click on “Save Changes” to the left of the bead palette.  This will update your pattern above with the correct colors and bead count.  

So as you can already surmise, if you only need a few changes, you can quickly make  them.   If you need a ton of changes you might be there awhile working on it.  I will suggest that if you are working on a large pattern, you may want to save the changes frequently it really helps to give you a better idea of the progress you are making.

Here’s my finished Game Boy Perler Bead design.

Looks good, right?

Now all that’s left it to download the pattern.  The site will download the file to your computer for you to reference at any time.   

Ok, so now I’ve showed you HOW to use Hobby-Family to make Perler Bead patterns you can go out there and try it.   

One word of warning though.  When using this Perler Bead pattern designer for photos the amount of work needed to update your photo to Perler form is HUGE.   You could spend hours tweaking it.   I suggest starting by using some simple clip art to understand exactly how the site works before delving into such a big project.  

Hobby-Family is not the only way to design your own Perler Bead Patterns, but it’s a great start for someone who’s looking for a free option for pattern creation.