Pixelhobby

[RMDC]

Okay, so what is this stuff? It seems like Perler meets Lego - buy a baseplate, snap on blocks, and you're done. Right?

But it seems awfully expensive. The Pixelhobby site says to plan for about seven bucks USD per baseplate. In contrast, the larger square pegboards for Perlers use about $2 USD worth of beads; the boards themselves are a one-time investment of one or two dollars. Unless you can fit four thousand pixels per Pixelhobby baseplate, it seems like Perlers give you way more bang for your buck.

On the other hand, with Pixelhobby, you can undo your work (right? Probably), the colors seem nicer, and the units are neat squares instead of donuts. You don't have to worry about uneven ironing or liquifying the beads or giving yourself burns.

Is that about the sum of it? Is it worth paying three to four times as much? What have people's experiences been?

[Ellentje]

I guess the Perler meets Lego is a good description. Only the squares are ridiculously small so you have to use tweezers to put them on the pegs, like in the picture below. As you can see you can put a pattern blow the plate so you don't have to count.

PixelHobby.jpg (43.45 KiB) Viewed 4312 times

It is indeed very expensive. I finally tried it when my local craft store was closing ( ) and everything was 70% off. I only made a piece that was one plate big, but you can put more of them together in a frame to make a big piece. It does have a very neat look and you can get lots and lots of colors (300 or something), which is great. Each plate is 2000 pixels (40x50) and it is really fast to do.
It is possible to remove pixels again, which I had to do because I didn't like one of the colors I used. However, you are likely to damage the pixels around the one you are removing with the tweezers. The pixels are quite soft and will get dented on the sides. So I had to remove the ones above, underneath and next to the pixel I wanted to replace too.

I do really like the end result a lot better than perlers, because of the nice squares and range of colors. And it is very sturdy so it doesn't bend/brake/whatever. But I find it too expensive to do on a regular basis, so I haven't made anything big since. I do sometimes make Pixel Hobby keychains, which are 11x14 pixels and very quick and easy.

*EDIT: and of course you can only make things that consists of one or more base plates, which only come in the 40x50 size. So there is not a lot of freedom in shapes like with perlers.

This is a keychain I made:

Lemming.JPG (38.48 KiB) Viewed 4311 times

And this is the one plate piece I made:

Harvest Moon.jpg (71.63 KiB) Viewed 4311 times

[Damaniel]

To answer your main question, Pixelhobby is expensive. *Really* expensive. I've done one, very large project with it:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=5733

This used 80 backing plates with approximately 100 colors, for a total of around $800 (so ~$10 per baseplate).

It's a shame, because it's by far my favorite way to make pixel art. The large selection of colors -- over 400 -- compares well with what cross stitchers have available, and assembling the blocks on the plates goes much faster than cross stitch (there's no way I could have done a 160k stitch piece in anything close to the 300 hours this project took me).

If it were more widely available, then the price might come down -- Hobbyware's website is the only place I know of where US buyers can get the whole range of products. I'm not sure that any brick and mortar shops have it for sale.

[CraftySasha]

Yes, pixelhobby can be expensive. However, like Damaniel said, since there are so many colors and shades, there are so many more things out there that you can do with it. for example, here is my big project I made with pixelhobby:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3865

This would not be possible in such detail if I were to do it with perlers.
I have another one that I want to do eventually, but there are so many other projects I want to do first, it may be a while before I come up with the money for it. Personally, I like pixelhobby more than perlers. I just couldn't get into the perler beads, however I have seen some truly awesome projects out there!

[Siva]

This post has actually gotten me really excited for Pixelhobby! I have found the image I want to make and even got a price quite ($104). The only question i have is how do you connect all the baseplates? I dont want to spend that kind of money on a project when I dont know the entire process. Any ifno would be greatly appreciated!