My new Pixel Hobby

Over the weekend a couple of friends and myself went around town and we ended up in a craftshop (of course), here a beautiful display caught my eye. It was a scene of brightly coloured butterflies done in a pixel style (unfortunately I've been scouring the Internet to see if I could find a pattern or image of it and have not been able to).

It was done in a craft called Pixelhobby (www.pixelhobby.com, www.pixelhobby-usa.com). I did look into the cost of making the design I saw but at over 90euros, it was a bit to dear for me. I found a (much) smaller pattern instead, of a white tiger, and took it home.

The way it works is that you have 'baseplates' and 'pixels'. The baseplates are clear and have hundreds of little pins on which you can put the pixels. The pattern is made up of different layers for each baseplate with about four colours in each layer, you place the plate on top of the pattern and put the pixel on where it's corresponding symbol is. I think I've made it sound more complicated then it is, just go to http://www.pixelhobby-usa.com/Instructions.aspx for clearer instructions!

 

Mats of pixels.

The pattern I chose is made up of just one baseplate (whereas the butterflies had nine) and it turns out you end up paying about 10euros per plate.

This is where I've got so far:

It's a lot quicker than cross stitching, although it's much fiddlier. Each pixel is only a millimeter or two in diameter and you have to stick them on with tweasers. It's quite fun though and I'd like to do some video game characters in this medium.