How KandiCon turns a photo, an emoji or a drawing into a pony bead pattern you can actually make, and how to pick a photo that works.
Beading a picture into a cuff is hard because you have to work out which bead goes where, row after row, using only the colors you can buy. That is the part KandiCon does. Here is what happens between picking a photo and stringing the first bead, so you know what to expect and how to get a good result.
Anything on your camera roll works: a pet, a cartoon, a drawing, a logo you made. You can also pick from 299 emoji, or draw your own pattern bead by bead in the Pattern Studio if you would rather not start from a photo.
On iPhone and Android, KandiCon can cut out the background so you bead the subject and not the couch behind it. That cut-out runs on your phone. In the browser version there is no cut-out, so a photo with a plain background works best there.
You choose how wide the pattern is, from 6 to 40 beads. Each pony bead is about 9mm, so 20 beads is about 7 inches and 40 is about 14. The rows follow from the shape of your picture.
Then a level of detail, which sets the starting size and the number of colors:
You can move the colors slider anywhere from 2 to 16 afterwards. More colors is not always better. See kandi cuff patterns for why.
This is the important bit. A photo has millions of colors. You can buy about forty colors of pony bead. KandiCon's palette is 40 real pony bead colors, and every spot in your picture is matched to the closest one.
"Closest" is measured the way your eye sees color, not by comparing raw screen values, so a dark blue shadow becomes navy and not black. Then the colors are narrowed down to the number you asked for, so a Medium pattern really does use five bags of beads, not twenty.
KandiCon counts how many beads of each color the pattern uses, most-used first, and adds about ten percent spare to each (never fewer than two). That is your shopping list. Check it against what you have before you start, so you do not run out of pink three rounds from the end.
Pick the stitch, ladder or multi-stitch, and the pattern is redrawn for it. The ladder view numbers every bead row by row. The multi-stitch view numbers each column from bottom to top in the order you add beads. A build mode walks you through it step by step, with the cut length for your cord worked out, checkpoints along the way, and a zoomed view of the bead you are on. If you need to learn the stitch first, kandi stitches explained covers them.
KandiCon makes patterns for pony beads strung on cord. It does not have a perler or fuse-bead palette and does not make pegboard patterns. If you are not sure which bead you have, read pony beads vs perler beads.
Save the pattern to your library, publish it so other makers can bead it too, and post a photo of the finished piece to the feed. Other makers will like it, comment and follow you. Your pattern can end up remade in somebody else's colors and posted back. The pattern maker works offline on your phone, and the whole thing works in your browser at kandicon.com/app with the same account. If you were looking for this as Candycon or Candicon, it is the same app.
Get KandiCon free on iPhoneGet it free on AndroidOpen it in your browser
More guides: How to make a kandi bracelet · Kandi stitches explained · Pony beads guide · Kandi cuff patterns