The ABKO Keycap Art Collection turns keyboard parts into a craft project that doesn’t require an interest in keyboards. My son and I spent part of Chuseok building Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and lost half a day to it. For a keyboard-loving dad, it was a very good excuse to share the hobby.
Inside the Box: A Puzzle, Not a Keyboard
The lineup features five famous masterpieces: Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, Manet’s The Fifer, Magritte’s The Son of Man, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Our family’s first pick was Van Gogh.
Opening the box reveals 400 keycaps sorted into numbered bags by color. You connect four white baseplates to form a 20×20 grid, then plug in the keycaps according to the numbered blueprint pattern. That’s all there is to it. The manual is in Korean, too. As soon as the box was open, my son poured out the pouches and lined them up in numerical order. At that moment, I knew: to him, these weren’t keyboard parts—they were puzzle pieces.
The First Hurdle: The Stem-Inserting Grind
The product page describes a simple operation: align a cap with its cross stem and press it into place. That is true once the base is ready, but getting there is a job of its own. Each empty position needs a little white stem inserted first. Repeating that same movement hundreds of times soon had my son’s hands slowing down. It was the unglamorous stage between opening the colorful bags and actually seeing a picture emerge. Anyone imagining only the enjoyable color-matching part should know that this preparation comes first.
Splitting that job between us helped. If you’re making it with a child, explain that this repetitive stage comes before the more enjoyable color work. It took about half our build time. The warning also says excessive pressure can damage the caps or base, so remind them not to force the pieces.
The Tables Turn as Colors Come In
Once every stem was seated, the mood completely flipped. My son tackled the black tones of the cypress tree first. Blocking out the large shapes made the overall outline appear fast. Next up was the moon in the top right. The moment it filled out in a circle of yellow and orange, both of us blurted out an “Oh!” at the same time.
The final touch was the swirling sky. As rows of sky blue and light green connected, Van Gogh’s signature swirling atmosphere emerged. Counting the grid and picking colors practically taught our hands where Van Gogh packed in the bright highlights. Making a mistake is completely stress-free. If a keycap goes into the wrong spot, just pop it out and press it back into the right one. My son actually enjoyed hunting down misaligned spots like a mini-game.
Take Three Steps Back to See the Masterpiece
We temporarily set the finished piece under the TV stand in the living room. Since it’s my parents’ house, they said they’d think about it for a few days and find a good spot for it. Up close, it looks like nothing more than a dense grid of keycaps. But take just three steps back, and it transforms into The Starry Night. The slight height variations and shadows cast between each keycap create a textured, three-dimensional depth that mimics actual brushstrokes.
The physical texture gives it something a flat print doesn’t have. Wall mounting is shown on the product page, too, with a reminder to secure it properly.
The Keyboard Geek’s Take: These Keycaps Fit Real Keyboards
As someone who loves keyboards, this is the most exciting detail. The keycaps are made of ABS and PC, and the stems use standard cross mounts, just like typical mechanical keyboards. The product page even includes promo shots of keycaps pulled from the frame and installed onto a keyboard. I haven’t swapped them over myself yet. Still, it seems designed so that if you ever get tired of looking at the art piece, you can repurpose them as accent keycaps. It’s not the kind of item where a diehard keycap enthusiast should nitpick textures and tolerances, but the fact that it doesn’t end as just a picture frame is definitely appealing.
One more thing: both the keycaps and stems are small parts. If you have babies or pets at home, make sure to set up a separate workspace.
Bonus Round: Father vs. Son Showdown in Progress
No way we were stopping at just Van Gogh. Over this holiday break, we set up two boards side by side. I took Girl with a Pearl Earring, while my son started on Mondrian. To spoil the ending: neither of us has finished yet.
The two pictures belong to the same series, yet working on them feels quite different. With the girl, I am finding the face’s light and shade inside a largely black background, which makes counting positions surprisingly demanding. Mondrian divides the colors into larger areas, letting my son move faster. At the moment, that leaves a real possibility that Dad will be the one finishing last. Neither work is complete, so I will leave the result for another post. The comparison has already added another kind of enjoyment to the holiday project, and it makes me curious about the look of a wall holding the whole set of all five finished pictures together.
