Free Perler Bead Pattern Maker: Image to Pegboard Chart

You can turn any photo or sprite into a perler bead pattern in a couple of minutes: upload the image, let it convert to a square grid, and export a numbered chart with a per-color bead count you read straight onto the pegboard. This guide explains how fuse beads, sizes, and grids work, then walks the exact steps to use Beadify as a free perler bead pattern maker.

What perler beads actually are

Perler beads are small plastic tubes you stand on a pegboard, one bead per peg, to build a flat design. Once the design is placed, you cover it with parchment and press a household iron over the top. The heat fuses the beads to their neighbors, and the board pops off a solid, rigid panel. The craft goes by several names depending on the brand in your bin.

Perler is the dominant brand in the United States. Hama is the European equivalent, Artkal is the value-and-color-range option from Asia, and Nabbi is common in Scandinavia. People also call them fuse beads, melty beads, or iron beads. They are all the same idea: a colored plastic cylinder sized to sit on a standardized grid.

What matters for pattern-making is the geometry. Every bead occupies one square cell, and the cells sit in a perfectly straight, aligned grid with no offset between rows. That is the single most useful fact in this whole article, and it is why converting an image to a fuse-bead chart is cleaner than converting one for most seed-bead stitches.

Midi versus mini: the two sizes that matter

Fuse beads come in a few diameters, but two cover almost everything you will make.

Midi at 5 mm is the default. A 29-peg-wide board gives you a panel roughly 5.7 inches across, which is a comfortable size for a coaster or a small wall piece. Mini at 2.6 mm packs more than three times the detail into the same physical footprint, at the cost of much fiddlier placement. A larger "Maxi" size exists for toddlers, but you would not use it for pattern work.

The size you choose changes nothing about how the chart is read. A 50-by-50 chart is 50 beads square whether you build it in midi or mini; only the finished panel's physical dimensions change. Pick the size first so the bead count on your shopping list matches the beads you will actually buy.

Cross-brand compatibility, and where it breaks

The convenient part: at midi size, the major brands interchange. Perler, Hama Midi, and Artkal S beads are all 5 mm, fit the same pegboards, and fuse at similar iron temperatures, so you can mix them in one project. Many builders deliberately drop Artkal beads into a mostly-Perler design to reach a color the Perler range does not carry.

Mini size is where you need to be careful. Hama Mini beads run slightly smaller than the others, closer to 2.5 mm, so mixing Hama Mini with Artkal Mini on the same board causes trouble: on a Hama board the Artkal beads can push themselves off, and on an Artkal board the Hama beads look undersized and fuse poorly. Artkal's hard C-2.6 mm minis are compatible with Perler and Hama; Artkal's soft EVA A-2.6 mm minis are meant to be used on their own. The safe rule is to stay within one bead size and, for minis specifically, avoid mixing Hama and Artkal.

Why a square-grid chart maps 1:1 to any pegboard

A pegboard is a square lattice. Each peg sits directly above the peg below it, with no horizontal shift between rows. That is the same layout as a cross-stitch grid or graph paper: column lines and row lines meet at right angles, and every cell is the same square shape.

This is the key reason fuse beads are forgiving to design for. With most seed-bead stitches the geometry fights you. Peyote and brick stitch offset every other row by half a bead, so a straight image grid never lines up cell-for-cell, and a circle drawn on the chart ends up stepped. Seed beads are not square either: a size 11/0 Miyuki Delica is wider than it is tall, roughly 1.6 mm by 1.3 mm, so a chart rendered bead-for-bead comes out about 20% wider than it is tall unless you add rows to compensate.

Fuse beads sidestep both problems. The bead footprint is effectively square and the grid has no offset, so one chart cell equals one peg with no correction. A pattern designed on a square grid is already a pegboard map. You read it the same way you would read a bead chart for loom work: left to right, top to bottom, one symbol per bead.

Using Beadify as a perler bead pattern maker

Beadify is a photo-to-pattern tool. It was built for seed-bead weaving, but its loom mode produces exactly the straight square grid a pegboard needs, so it doubles as a fuse-bead pattern generator. Here is the workflow end to end.

1. Upload your image. Drop in a photo, logo, or pixel sprite. High-contrast art with clean edges converts most predictably; busy photos need a bigger grid to stay legible.
2. Pick the Pixel Art preset. This keeps outlines crisp and turns off dithering, so you get flat blocks of color instead of speckled noise, which is what you want for fuse beads. If you are converting an actual pixel sprite, switch on pixel-exact import so one source pixel becomes exactly one bead, with no resampling.
3. Choose the loom (square) grid. Select the loom stitch. Its grid is straight and square with no row offset, so every cell corresponds to one peg. Do not pick peyote or brick for fuse work; those add a half-bead stagger you do not want.
4. Set the bead size and grid. Choose the "Perler / Hama Midi 5mm" or "Mini Fuse Beads 2.6mm" size preset, then set the grid dimensions to match your board, such as 29 by 29 for a single standard square pegboard.
5. Reduce the palette to what you own. Cap the number of colors so the result matches the beads in your bins. The free plan supports up to 16 colors per pattern, which is plenty for most sprites and signs.
6. Export the free PDF. Download the pattern. You get a numbered chart you read peg by peg and a per-color shopping list with exact counts, so you know how many of each color to pour out before you start.

The PDF is the part that saves real time. Instead of counting squares off a screenshot, you place beads straight from a printed grid and check each color's total against the list. Beadify's pattern workspace keeps the project so you can adjust the grid or palette and re-export without starting over.

Sizing your pattern to the pegboard

The standard Perler square pegboard is 29 pegs by 29 pegs and measures about 5.7 inches across. The boards interlock, so four of them snapped together hold up to roughly 3,364 beads and give you a panel near 11 inches square. Plan your grid around whole boards to avoid a design that straddles an awkward seam.

A few sizing notes that save grief:

• Match the grid to the board, not the other way around. If you have one square board, design at 29 by 29 or smaller. If you have four, design up to 58 by 58.
• Watch the bead budget. A solid 29-by-29 panel is 841 beads. The free plan caps a pattern at 2,500 beads, which comfortably covers a single board and most two-board layouts.
• Bigger grid, more legible photo. A face or a detailed photo needs room. At 29 by 29 a portrait reads as an abstract blob; the same portrait at 58 by 58 starts to resolve. Sprites are the opposite, since they are already low-resolution and shine at small sizes.
• Leave the background as negative space if you want. On a pegboard you simply leave those pegs empty, the same way a loom leaves warp threads unbeaded. There is no fused panel where there are no beads, so plan for a piece that will be an irregular shape rather than a filled square.

Ironing basics: fusing without flattening

The chart gets you to a finished bead layout; fusing turns that layout into a keepsake. Perler's own standard method is straightforward, and the same approach works for Hama and Artkal at midi size.

1. Heat a dry iron to medium-high, with steam off. Steam holes leave uneven marks on the beads.
2. Cover the design with the parchment that comes with the beads, or plain baking parchment. Never put the iron directly on the beads.
3. Press in slow circles for about 10 to 30 seconds. Keep the iron moving. You are melting the rims of the beads just enough to bond them, not collapsing the holes.
4. Lift the parchment and check. When the bead tops are fused but still show their ring holes, you are done. If the centers have closed into solid dots, you went too far.
5. Let it cool flat, then iron the back too if you want both faces sealed. Cooling under a flat weight, like a book, keeps the panel from warping.

If you are new to the fusing step, follow the brand's printed instructions for your iron; plastics and irons vary, and a 15-second test on a corner beats melting a finished piece.

How Beadify helps

Beadify converts your image into a clean square-grid chart and a per-color count, which is the slow, error-prone part of fuse-bead work done for you. The free plan exports the full PDF, handles up to 2,500 beads and 16 colors per pattern, saves up to three patterns, and needs no card to start. Pick the loom grid and a fuse-bead size preset and the chart you get is a pegboard map. See the perler workflow on the homepage or just make your first pattern.

Related reading

If you want to go deeper on the conversion and charting side, these three pair well with this guide:

• How to Turn Any Photo into a Bead Pattern walks the image-prep choices that make or break a conversion.
• How to Convert a Cross Stitch Pattern to Beads covers the grid math when your source is already a chart.
• How to Read a Bead Chart explains grid orientation and color codes so a printed pattern never loses you.

Fuse beads are the friendliest place to start with image-to-bead work because the grid does exactly what you expect: one cell, one bead, no offset, no aspect-ratio fudging. Get a chart, sort your colors, and the building is the easy part.