~ PRODUCT UPDATES ~
What's New at MakeBead
We ship improvements all the time — almost always free, and usually because someone asked. Here's what just landed, and what you can do with it.
August 2026
Minecraft map art, shaded the way the game does it
Map art is not a flat floor. Minecraft decides each block's brightness by comparing its height to the block just north of it, which is why real map art is built as a staircase. The new generator solves those heights for you: upload a picture and get the height of every block, a materials list that counts the terrain underneath instead of only the surface, and a map file you can drop into a world to see the finished art before you place anything.
A banner maker that gives you the loom steps
Design a banner layer by layer and get the part other tools leave out — the exact loom sequence that builds it. It also shows the design on a shield, which is genuinely a different picture, and hands you the /give command in the right format for your version. 45 ready-made designs to start from, Java and Bedrock.
Spell a word in Minecraft banners
Minecraft has no letter pattern, so every banner alphabet is a trick of geometry — stripes and a saltire, plus layers dyed the background colour to cut shapes back out. Type a word and get one banner per letter in your own two colours, each with the loom sequence that builds it. A few letters are honest approximations, because a loom applies six layers and S needs seven; those say exactly what they gave up.
83 Minecraft banner designs, each with its loom steps
A picture of a banner tells you nothing about how to build it — and with only six loom layers to spend, guessing wrong costs dye. So every design in the new gallery carries its exact loom sequence: country flags, simple shapes, decorative patterns and themed banners, all buildable, and each one opens in the editor if you want to change the colours.
Crochet hook sizes, converted properly
A chart that converts between US letters, metric millimetres, UK numbers and Japanese sizes. Steel hooks get a table of their own because their numbering genuinely runs backwards from everything else — and where two standards disagree, the page says so rather than quietly picking one.
July 2026
A designer page for bead loom patterns
The bead loom converter has always turned a photo into a chart — but drawing an original band from scratch meant borrowing the perler designer, which rendered round pegboard beads instead of loom cylinders. The loom now has a designer of its own: a blank warp-and-weft canvas with the Miyuki Delica palette, DB codes on hover, and a PDF export that counts beads per colour. Find it under Designers, or from the DESIGNER pill on the loom converter.
Edit or unpublish a published pattern
Publishing used to be one-way: the moment a pattern went public, its title, description and tags were frozen, and the only way out of the gallery was deleting it. A reader wrote in about exactly this, so both are fixed — every public pattern in My Patterns now has a button to edit its listing and one to unpublish it. The pattern and its likes stay safely private, ready to republish anytime, and if you retitle it the old link quietly forwards to the new one.
Tell us which bead set you bought
A materials list naming beads that were never in your box is worse than no list at all. MARD is sold as numbered sets, so the sidebar now asks which one you own — anything from the 24 up to the 216 — and the pattern is built only from the colours in that box. The contents come from the manufacturer’s own set charts, not from guesswork.
MARD's 221-colour kit — and a page of its own
MARD arrived in May with the 185-colour kit. Someone wrote in asking for the 221, so it is here: 36 more colours — D26, F25, H5–H23 and the M series, mostly the greys, taupes and muted skin tones the smaller kit cannot reach. Both kits sit in the brand switcher with the A1 / B5 codes printed on your bottles, and MARD has its own page now.
Work one colour at a time
Nobody places a pattern in reading order — you open one bag, place every bead of that shade, then open the next. The progress tracker now lists every colour with how many are LEFT, and tapping one pushes every other colour into the background so the beads you are hunting for are the only ones at full strength. “Mark all placed” finishes the whole bag in one tap.
Track your build in the designer too
“Start Crafting” used to exist only after converting a photo. A pattern you drew by hand poses exactly the same bead-by-bead problem, so the designer has it now — click beads off as you place them, drag to paint a run, and your progress is kept in the browser.
See symbols, codes and board seams while you design
The designer already put chart symbols and pegboard seams into your exported PDF, but never on screen. Both are toggles on the canvas now, along with a new Pixels view that flattens round beads to plain squares — easier to count edges against a real board, and available in the converter and the tracker as well.
Edit Pattern opens the real designer
Editing a converted pattern used to drop you into a cut-down editor with no select, resize, mirror or reference image. It hands the grid to the full designer now. The tool also remembers the bead brand and the display toggles you chose, so they are set the way you left them next time.
Eight new craft chart tools
MakeBead now charts far more than beads: crochet graphs (graphgan & C2C), filet crochet with the foundation-chain math worked out for you, tapestry crochet with in-the-round instructions for mochila bags, overlay mosaic with a derived X chart, knitting charts in true stitch proportions, alpha friendship bracelets, and real staggered peyote & brick stitch for Miyuki Delica beads. Every tool turns any photo into a chart, writes row-by-row instructions, and exports a printable PDF — free.
See your photo through the pattern
The “Compare original” tool now has a second slider that fades the pattern itself — not just the photo underneath. Slide it down and your beads turn translucent, so the original photo shows straight through and you can check every color against it.
June 2026
Your own palette — “My Colors”
Pick any color, or paste a whole list of codes, and save it to a personal palette that follows you into every design. Sign in and it syncs across all your devices.
Convert a photo using only your colors
On the image converter, choose “All my colors” and your pattern is built only from beads you actually own — no more buying colors you'll never use.
Print-ready exports: color list + ruler
Export your design as a PNG with a full color and bead-count list, plus optional ruler numbers around the grid so you never lose your place while placing beads.
Save once, open anywhere
Save a design to your account and pick it right back up on your phone, tablet, or laptop. Your patterns and colors stay in sync automatically.
Clearer saving for first-timers
New here? When you save, we now explain in one tap that we'll keep your design and bring it right back after you sign in — nothing ever gets lost.
Fully available in your language
Your account, saved patterns, favorites, settings, and the design tools themselves (My Colors, the photo converter, and print exports) now work perfectly in all 11 languages — Spanish, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, and both Chinese scripts.
May 2026
Mirror Mode for two-sided designs
Design back-to-back pieces — perfect for keychains, earrings, and symmetric patterns. Draw one side and the shape mirrors to the other automatically.
MARD palette: the 185-color Chinese standard
We added the full MARD (A1–H4) color system used in Chinese bead shops, plus a one-tap brand switcher right in the designer.
Paint with any color you like
A custom color picker lets you use any HEX color, and the materials list still counts every bead correctly.
Clearer printable charts
PNG and PDF exports now support cross-stitch and diamond-style symbols, mark empty cells, and stay readable even at small sizes and in non-Latin languages.
April 2026
New craft: bead loom (Miyuki Delica)
A bead-loom designer with 2,900+ Miyuki Delica colors — for woven bracelets and loom art.
Now in 11 languages
MakeBead is fully translated into 11 languages — English, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean, French, Russian, Thai, Portuguese, and both Chinese scripts.
Share your designs
Share any pattern with a link and a preview image, and open shared designs straight into the editor to remix them.
Eight craft styles, one editor
Multi-brand palettes and a full editor across Perler, cross stitch, pixel art, Minecraft, LEGO, kandi, diamond painting, and bead loom.
~ FREE, NO SIGN-UP NEEDED ~
Try the latest — start a design now
Everything here is free and runs right in your browser. Jump into the designer and see the new tools for yourself.
OPEN THE DESIGNER →Got an idea or found something broken? We read every message — use the Feedback button in the footer.