Kendra's Birthday Presents

Like I mentioned in the last post, I've been making a lot of presents for people since I quit smoking.

These two were gifts for Kendra, an arteest who appreciates intelligent entertainment.  Like Sailor Moon.

Venus is her favorite, and I've been meaning to do a Sailor Venus cross stitch for awhile.  For whatever reason, it just didn't happen until this summer.

This is the (almost) finished version.  It's sort of sprite stitch since the source picture is a sprite from the SNES Sailor Stars Puzzle Game, taken from here.

I say it's sort of sprite stitch because I usually change the sprites a bit.  The most obvious change here is that I've added some backstitching to show the detail on the sleeves and to give her a nose.  I also did an orange backstitch (DMC S741) around the big yellow heart instead of using different colored pixles like in the sprite.

Another thing I tend to do is take out the shading.  Some sprites will also have a few pixels that are a different color, and when I was doing Perler Beads more frequently, I thought it looked kind of crap.

For whatever reason, I probably spent more time on this sprite than any other.  (Okay, so a lot of the other stuff was little Mario sprites)  One problem was getting a new computer before I'd finished the pattern.  A new computer with Windows Vista, which doesn't like XP's free photo editor.  I had to make do with Paint since that was the only thing that let me zoom in without losing picture quality.

(And I wish I'd gotten KG Stitch up and running much sooner.)

While I was finishing up Venus Love and Beauty Shock, the idea for the other present popped into my head.

I took this LJ icon, and turned it into a quick and dirty cross stitch.

I graphed out the cross stitches for the head, but the hair, brooch, and collar were freehand.  As for the text, "Sailor V for Victory!" is something Sailor Venus says at some point in the anime.

And this is either the best personalized gift ever, or proof that I shouldn't craft late at night.