For my latest melted beads project I decided to remain old school, this time with Link from The Legend of Zelda (NES).

I found a lot of sprite designs online for this one but none were lage enough to maximize the 29×29 pixel grid. Again I used PCStitch to convert images I had found and edit it to make the desired design using the Pyssla beads 10-color pallet…

Inspired by the cross stitch projects (and by our very own Jenni Lada), I picked up a pack of Ikea’s plastic beads and decided to give a go at some 8-bit art.

Since I live pretty close to an Ikea, I picked up Ikea’s bucket o’ beads (aka Pyssla, US$5.99) which contains ten colors, most of which are appropriate for old-school avatars. For my first project I opted for a Racoon Mario from the classic NES game, Super Mario Bros. 3. For the working base I used Ikea’s Pyssla bead shape set (US$2.00) which includes four colored shapes. The largest is the white square with 29 x 29 pegs.

Today’s cross stitch is designed to warm every Final Fantasy-loving heart. It is a FFVI family portrait, featuring Shadow, Relm and their dog Interceptor. Hey! Don’t go crying spoilers at me. The game’s 14 years old – the spoiler-cut statute has expired.

Click through to see an “in-progress” picture and find more cross stitch links…

A couple of my friends are serious Pokemon addicts, so after the Mudkip teaser, I was quickly ordered to complete a second cross stitch with a similar theme. Since I only like the pokemon which look cute, I decided to do a cross stitch featuring Smoochum, Elekid and Magby.

Click through for more information and cross stitch links…

Tonberries are probably one of the more devious video game villains, and yet, at the same time, one of the most intriguing. They’re cute little lizard things who generally prefer to be left alone. If you decide you absolutely must terrorize them, then they’ll hurt you so bad your great-grandpa will feel it. If running is an option, they’ll let you go.

Final Fantasy games are some of my favorites, so I decided it was time for a cross stitch of one a character from one of those games. I headed to the Sprite Database and picked out a tonberry sprite from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and set to work.

First off, I realize this week’s cross stitch is a bit late. (Normally they’re up on Mondays or Tuesdays.) However I ran into a little problem concerning thread color (the two shades of brown were actually identical, imagine that), so I didn’t finish the piece until Wednesday night.

Jump Ultimate Stars is easily one of the best DS titles. It’s just absolutely perfect, and insanely addicting. There also happen to be some amazing sprites in the game. Since I’m something of a closet Naruto fan, I decided to create a cross stitch of a character from that series who happened to appear in that game. Since I also happen to like dogs, I decided a Kakashi cross stitch was in order. I like to call it “Storytime.” Aren’t the puppies precious?

The World Ends with You hasn’t even been released yet, but I’m already a huge fan. I adored the Japanese version, Subarashiki Kono Sekai: It’s a Wonderful World, and was ecstatic when Square Enix announced it was being prepped for a US and European release. To celebrate the release, I wanted to do a cross stitch of one of the game’s sprites, because the art style really sucked me in. I decided that, since DS sprites can be a bit complex, to go with a very simple and classic Samba Pig.

I really love the Fire Emblem games. The first GBA one Fire Emblem (which is actually the seventh game in the series) was my first and it really kicked my butt. To this day I still haven’t beaten it. Despite that, I still love the game because it got me interested in the series. I also really liked the siblings Nils and Ninian as characters. They’re pretty useful. I found some great sprites of them at Sprite Database and decided I wanted to do a slightly larger cross stitch than normal with the two of them. Aside from some color difficulties (why did there have to be so many shades of blue), and an accidental miscounting on Ninian’s scarf that had to be repaired, I think it came out really well.

So my latest cross stitch also happens to be my smallest – it is a mudkip from the Pokemon games. To give an idea of the scale of it, I placed a pumpkin seed next to it. I also have to say that, while this cross stitch still had a substantial amount of color, it was the easiest to finish. I’d definitely recommend Pokemon sprites to beginning cross stitchers.

I wanted to do something slightly Smash Brothers-ish for my next cross stitch, but that would still be delightfully retro and nostalgic. When I stopped by my favorite sprite database, The Spriters Resource, and saw these Ice Climbers sprites by Koopaul, I knew what I had to do. Originally I wanted to have a snappy title for this. Something like “Nana told Popo leave the seat down,” “Hold still! There’s a fly on you!” or “When I said hit the pink thing, I meant Kirby! Not me!” I decided to fall back on something simpler – “Nana gets mad.” Why is Nana mad? Fill in the blank – it’s more fun that way.

Click through to learn how it was made and see links to previous cross stitch projects.