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, square badges, acrylic charms and 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 find out exactly 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, square badges, acrylic charms and standard 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" stacks them with roughly 20% coverage for that dense shrine look, and "Staggered" offsets every other row into a honeycomb. Each pattern reports columns × rows and the exact total, so you know how many badges to collect before you spend.
• Oshi colors and your own images: A 16-color palette of standard fan colors 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 the symmetrical "shrine" arrangements the hobby is famous for.

🧐 Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is the difference between "Overlap" and "Staggered"?

A. Overlap places each badge so it covers about 20% of its neighbors, packing the most badges into the same area — the classic dense ita-bag look. Staggered keeps badges from touching 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. Yes. Japanese merch sizes are given in millimeters, and the common conversions are simple: 2.25 inches is about 57 mm, 1.75 inches is about 44 mm, and 3 inches is about 76 mm. Pick the closest preset or compare against the 75 mm chip for 3-inch buttons.

Q. Will the real bag match the simulated count exactly?

A. Treat the numbers as a planning guide. Fabric stretch, pin placement and hand alignment usually shift the real-world result by an item or two compared with the idealized flat layout.

📚 What is an "Ita-Bag"?

An "ita-bag" (痛バッグ) is a bag — usually with a clear vinyl window — covered in a carefully arranged collection of character merchandise: pin-back buttons, acrylic charms, rubber straps and trading cards. 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. A well-built ita-bag is often called a "shrine": badges in disciplined rows, a centerpiece for the favorite character, color gradients matching the character's image color. Builders plan layouts before pinning anything, because rearranging dozens of badges on fabric is slow and risks scratching them. That planning step is exactly what this simulator replaces — experiment with packing styles, swap colors, and settle on a design before a single pin goes through the bag.