Palettes: Perler, Hama, Artkal S, Nabbi, MARD · 10–290 beads wide · up to 60 colours
Free fuse beads patterns to start with
What fuse beads are, and who uses them
Fuse beads (also called melty beads, ironing beads or by brand names) are small plastic cylinders placed on a pegboard and then ironed through baking paper so they melt together into a single piece. They are a favourite with children because the technique is simple and forgiving, but adult makers use them too for coasters, keyrings, wall art, pixel-art tributes and seasonal decorations.
Because every bead is one square of colour, fuse bead patterns read just like pixel art. That makes them a natural fit for a tool that turns photos and text into grids.
Choosing size, colours and beads
Bead size first. Midi beads (5 mm) are the everyday size and suit most designs. Mini beads (2.6 mm) give far more detail in the same space but need tweezers and patience. Maxi beads (10 mm) are good for small hands and chunky, bold pieces. A design 58 beads wide is about 29 cm across in midi beads, but only around 15 cm in minis.
Then the grid size. Think in pegboards. A single 29 × 29 square board holds 841 beads; a 58 × 58 design fills four boards in a square. Keeping your width and height at or just under multiples of 29 avoids buying an extra row of boards for a sliver of design. The pegboard planning guide covers layouts in detail.
Then colours. Beads come in a fixed range of solid colours, so photo patterns work best with a limited palette: 10 to 20 colours is a comfortable range for a portrait-style piece, and simple icons often need fewer than eight. You can choose colours compatible with Perler®, Hama®, Artkal S, Nabbi or MARD, and browse the full Perler-compatible colour chart before you start.
Where each tool helps
The photo to fuse bead pattern tool maps your picture to real bead colours and shows a realistic preview of melted beads alongside the symbol chart. It has a skip-background option for transparent or white backgrounds, so you are not left placing hundreds of white beads you did not want.
The text tool is handy for name plaques, bag tags and word banners. Choose a font, a border and colours, then set a fixed width if the lettering must fit a particular board.
The editor lets you draw a design from scratch, mirror half of a symmetrical shape, or clean up a converted image one bead at a time.
Before you shop, the bead count calculator works out how many beads and 1,000-bead packs you need and how many pegboards across and down. Downloads include a PDF chart with bold lines every 29 beads marking the pegboard edges, plus a CSV shopping list with an exact count per colour.
Mistakes that catch people out
- Starting too large. A 100 × 100 design is 10,000 beads and 16 square boards. Start smaller, finish it, and scale up for the next project.
- Leaving the background in. If you only want the subject, remove the background before placing beads; you save time and beads.
- Too many similar colours. Plastic beads have no in-between shades, so two near-identical greys mostly add sorting work. Merge colours that appear only a few times.
- Ironing unevenly. Even pressure and an even heat matter more than speed. Many makers iron one side, let it cool under a weight to stay flat, then do a lighter pass on the back.
- Not checking the board orientation. When you join several boards, keep the chart’s page map beside you so each board goes in the right place.
Perler bead ideas
Looking for something to make? Our Perler bead patterns and ideas page gathers every fuse bead pattern on the site with all our pixel art designs, which fit a standard 29 × 29 pegboard as they are: animals, food, holiday decorations, keychains and magnets, each with a bead count by colour.
Your first fuse bead project, step by step
- Decide on bead size and how many boards you want to use.
- Upload a simple, high-contrast image or type a short word, and set the width to fit those boards.
- Choose your bead brand and keep the colour limit modest.
- Check the realistic preview, fix any stray beads in the editor, and download the PDF.
- Count out beads per colour from the key, place them board by board, and iron through baking paper.
Fuse beads guides
Frequently asked questions
Which bead brands are the colours based on?
You can pick a palette of colours compatible with Perler® (103 colours), Hama® (92), Artkal S (199), Nabbi (30) or MARD (291). The key also shows the nearest Hama colour for a Perler pattern and so on, which helps when your bead box is a mix of brands. These are visual matches, not official brand charts.
Can I make a pattern for mini or maxi beads?
Yes. Choose mini (2.6 mm), midi (5 mm) or maxi (10 mm) in the craft settings. The grid stays the same, but the finished size and the chart's real-world measurements change with the bead size.
Why are there thick lines every 29 beads on the chart?
Those lines mark the edges of a standard 29 × 29 square pegboard. Each block between them is one board, so you can fill boards one at a time and line them up afterwards without miscounting.
My design is bigger than one pegboard. What should I do?
Clip several square pegboards together, or build one board at a time and fuse each section before joining. The PDF cover says how many large square pegboards you need, across and down, and the bold lines on the chart mark the edge of each board.
Can I use a pixel art image without the colours changing?
Turn on Preserve exact colours in the advanced settings. Each pixel then becomes one bead and is matched to the nearest bead colour without blending, which keeps hard pixel edges intact.
How do I know how many beads of each colour to buy?
Each cell on the chart is one bead, so the colour key lists an exact count for every colour. The CSV shopping list puts those counts in a spreadsheet-friendly form. It is sensible to have a few spares of each, since beads roll away.
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