What is Pixelhobby? Mosaic pixel art on baseplates

A mosaic you press together

Pixelhobby is a mosaic craft from the Netherlands. The pixels are tiny plastic tiles, and each one presses onto a pin on a plastic baseplate and stays put. There's no glue, no ironing and no varnish. You fill a plate pin by pin from a pattern, join plates together for bigger pictures, and frame the result.

The company makes and packages everything in Wervershoof, in North Holland. Ger Verschoor, who came up with Pixelhobby, says the idea goes back to 1980: something colorful like embroidery, but simpler, that a whole family could do, and that could turn your own photo into a mosaic. The brand says it suits everyone from age 4.

The parts

Baseplates

The original baseplate has 2,000 pins in a grid of 50 by 40. Every plate has an arrow on the back that shows its orientation. Keep every arrow pointing the same way across a project, whether that's always up or always to the right, so each plate matches the way the pattern is laid out.

Transparent baseplates are the clever bit. You lay the plate over the printed pattern and see exactly where each color goes, with no counting. On the back of each plate are 4 notches for small dovetail connectors, which is how separate plates lock together into one large picture.

Pixel squares

Pixels come attached in small mats called pixel squares, and each Classic square holds 140 pixels of one color. You take a pixel off the square and press it onto a pin. The range runs to more than 300 colors, each identified by the number printed on the back of its square. Pixelhobby makes the squares from a bio-plastic produced from sugarcane, and says they're 100% recyclable.

Tweezers

They're optional, and fingers work fine. Pixelhobby makes straight and bent tweezers. They're handiest for the tiny Classic pixels, and they're the easiest way to pull out a pixel you placed by mistake.

Pixel and Pixel XL

Pixelhobby comes in two sizes.

XL is twice as wide in each direction, so each pixel covers four times the area. That's easier to handle and quicker to fill, and XL kits include simple themed pictures and magnets. Classic fits four pixels into the space of one XL pixel, so it's the one for photo portraits.

Both sizes use the same baseplates. The large plate takes 2,000 Classic pixels or 20 by 25 XL, and the flexible square plate 46 by 46 Classic or 23 by 23 XL.

How big a picture gets

At 2.5 mm per pixel, a full Classic baseplate makes a picture about 12.5 by 10 cm. Plates join edge to edge, so size grows in whole plates.

Plates can also run on their side, as long as all the arrows point the same way, so the same layouts work in portrait.

Pixel squares are easy to estimate from this. One plate needs 2,000 pixels, so even an all-one-color plate takes 15 squares. Real designs need more, because every color you use leaves part of a square left over.

Reading a Pixelhobby pattern

Pixelhobby uses two kinds of pattern.

Bigger projects come with symbol patterns, split into parts. Each part uses only 4 symbols, and next to each symbol is the color number to use. The catch is that the same symbol means a different color on each part, so check the legend every time you move on. The pattern also tells you which parts belong to which plate.

The routine goes like this:

1. Slide the transparent plate over the first pattern part, arrow pointing the right way.
2. Fill in every pixel for that part.
3. Slide the plate along to the next part and repeat until the plate is full.
4. Start the next plate. When they're all done, connect them with dovetails.

Smaller sets use color patterns instead, where the chart is printed in the actual colors. If you're working on a non-transparent plate or a medallion, you count the pattern square by square like any other chart.

If you print a pattern yourself, print it at 100% with no scaling. A pattern that's shrunk to fit the page won't line up under the plate.

Finishing and framing

There isn't much to it, which is part of the appeal. Once every plate is full, lock them together with the dovetail connectors and the picture is done. Nothing needs varnishing, and there's nothing to wait for while it dries.

Pixelhobby also makes frames. On a Pixelhobby pattern, the first page is the materials list, and it gives the order number of the frame that fits, with codes such as 2x2P or 4x5L. If you design your own, measure the joined plates before you choose a frame.

Choosing a photo

Turning your own photo into a pattern is one of the big draws. Pixelhobby's own tips:

• A portrait, like a school photo or a photographer's shot, almost always works.
• Crop as close to the subject as you can.
• More baseplates means more detail. A face on a single plate gets only 40 or 50 pixels across, which is fine for a silhouette but thin for a likeness.
• Avoid photos that are washed out or too dark, look for clear contrast, and watch for heavy shadows across faces.
• If the colors come out muddy, try the photo in black and white.

Pixelhobby vs fuse beads

Pixelhobby gets compared with fuse beads a lot, and the Classic pixel is the same 2.5 mm as Hama's mini beads. The big difference is that fuse beads are ironed to fuse them together, while Pixelhobby pixels stay on their pins.

No heat makes Pixelhobby a good choice for a classroom or a kitchen table full of children, and for anyone who wants to change their mind halfway through. The fuse bead guide covers the other side of the comparison.

Designing your own

Craft Studio's Pixelhobby pattern maker is free with an account. Set the grid to 50 by 40 for a single plate in Classic pixels or 25 by 20 in XL, or a multiple of that for more, up to 500 by 500. You can draw pixel by pixel or import a photo, which is resized to your grid and reduced to as many colors as you choose. The palette picker includes a starter set of 32 Pixelhobby Classic colors listed by their numbers, and Palette analysis counts the pixels in each color, so you can work out how many squares you need. Exports include a printable PDF with symbols and a color key, plus PNG, SVG and EPS.

For pixel designs that aren't tied to Pixelhobby's colors, the pixel art editor works on the same kind of grid, and pixel art patterns has ideas for designing at small sizes.