Building Toonbead: turning photos into bead art you can actually make

I’m building a small craft tool called Toonbead.

The idea is simple: upload a pet, portrait, or gift photo and turn it into a fuse bead pattern that someone can actually make at a craft table.

The tricky part is that “photo to pixel art” is not the same thing as “photo to bead pattern.”

A pixelated image can look fine on screen and still be painful to build:

• too many colors
• noisy one-off pixels
• no real bead color matching
• no bead counts
• no board layout
• no printable instructions
• no sense of whether the project is beginner-friendly

So Toonbead is focused on the practical craft constraints, not just the image result.

The workflow I’m aiming for:

1. Upload a meaningful photo.
2. Keep the subject recognizable.
3. Convert it into a cleaner bead-friendly design.
4. Match it to real bead colors.
5. Show size, bead count, color count, and difficulty.
6. Export a printable pattern that is ready to build.

I’m starting with pet portraits, personal gifts, and beginner-friendly fuse bead projects because those are the situations where the result needs to feel personal and still be realistic to finish.

What I’m still thinking through:

• Should users choose board size first, or difficulty first?
• How many colors is “too many” for a beginner pattern?
• Should the first export be a PDF, an on-screen grid, or both?
• How much editing should happen before the pattern is considered final?

If you make fuse bead art, pixel art, printable craft patterns, or tools for creative workflows, I’d love feedback.

Try the early version here: Toonbead