Ita-Bag Badge Layout Simulator | Design Your Shrine at True Scale
Plan your ita-bag the way you would actually build it. Enter your bag's window size, then drag pin badges, heart badges, 53×53 mm square badges, 45×70 mm acrylic charms and 63×88 mm trading cards around a true-scale canvas. Color-code every item with your oshi's color, clip your own images into badge shapes, auto-fill the bag to estimate how many badges you need, and export the finished design as a PNG.
💡 Tool Overview
- Five item types, placed at true scale: Round pin badges from 44 mm to 75 mm (the 2.25 inches / 57 mm size familiar to overseas collectors included), plus heart badges, 53×53 mm square badges, 45×70 mm acrylic charms and standard 63×88 mm trading cards. Drag to move, rotate, duplicate and delete each piece freely.
- Auto-fill with three packing patterns: "Flat" tiles badges edge to edge, "Overlap" sets them 80% of a diameter apart, so neighbors overlap by about 20% of the diameter, for that dense shrine look, and "Staggered" offsets every other row into a honeycomb. Flat and Overlap show columns × rows = total, and Staggered shows the total, so you have an estimate of how many badges to collect before you spend.
- Oshi colors and your own images: A 16-color palette plus a free color picker, applied per item. Choose an image from your device and it is clipped into the badge or charm shape, turning a diagram of circles into a believable preview of the finished bag.
- PNG export for sharing and shopping: Download the layout as a PNG to use as a trade-offer reference, a shopping checklist companion, or a concept to share with friends before a convention.
- Guides for symmetry: A 1 cm grid with center lines helps you build symmetrical "shrine" arrangements.
🧐 Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is the difference between "Overlap" and "Staggered"?
A. Overlap sets badges 80% of a diameter apart, so each one overlaps its neighbors by about 20% of the diameter, packing the most badges into the same area. Staggered keeps badges from overlapping but shifts every other row by half a badge, like a honeycomb, which hides gaps while keeping every design fully visible.
Q. Are my uploaded images sent anywhere?
A. No. Image loading, clipping and PNG generation all happen inside your browser; nothing is uploaded to a server, and closing the page discards the images.
Q. My badges are sized in inches — can I still use this?
A. The diameter buttons are in millimeters, as Japanese merch sizes are: 44, 54, 57, 65 and 75 mm. For reference, 2.25 inches is about 57 mm, 1.75 inches is about 44 mm, and 3 inches is about 76 mm (1 inch = 25.4 mm). An inch size is close to a button but not the same, and even a small difference can change how many badges fit in a row: on a 30 × 21 cm area laid flat, 75 mm badges fit 8, but 3-inch (76.2 mm) badges fit only 6. So the count for the nearest button is not the count for your inch-sized badges.
Q. Will the real bag match the simulated count exactly?
A. Treat the numbers as a planning guide. The tool calculates on a flat plane, and the number you can actually attach to a bag can differ from it.
📚 What is an "Ita-Bag"?
An "ita-bag" (痛バッグ) is a bag — usually with a clear window — covered in a carefully arranged collection of character merchandise: pin-back buttons, acrylic charms and similar goods. The name literally means "painful bag," borrowed from "itasha" (decorated cars), a self-deprecating joke about how intensely the owner's devotion shows.
The heart of the hobby is arrangement, with badges lined up in disciplined rows. This simulator lets you plan that arrangement on screen: experiment with packing styles, swap colors, and settle on a design before a single pin goes through the bag.