cross-stitch toy soldiers

I've said many and varied times before that if an idea hits me, I do tend to get lost in it, especially if it contains a large amount of footelling around with Photoshop.

What started out, quite innocently, as a search for the sexy merman ornaments (I'm very tempted by the Aqua Merman) mentioned in Aiden Ash's latest blog post turned into a Google Safari for toy soldiers... which, really, is just asking for trouble (oooh, bright shiny things)...

But one of the images I found was a toy soldier done in cross-stitch... which, I'll admit, had never crossed my mind. I've considered doing a large scale, semi-abstract toy solider painting, but I hadn't thought about other arts and crafts opportunities. And I've done cross-stitch, and quite enjoyed it... even if there were a couple of things that I started way, way, way back in the day and never finished.

So the idea of little cross-stitch toy soldiers started to dance around in my brain...

Then they started to form into ranks and platoons or whatever the correct piece of phraseology would be for the little buggers...

Which then led to me sitting down with Photoshop and, after some trial and error and a couple of false starts, working (albeit using the image that I'd found for inspiration) on a cross-stitch pattern for a toy soldier.

Actually it was a ton of fun. I've done various bits of pixel art before (mostly fan art stuff), and this was in a similar vein... fiddly, but fun.

Eventually I ended up with what I'm calling "TS Prime"... that's him on the left up at the top... he's your basic, bog standard toy soldier, very much based on the original image I found. Then I started "finesse-ing" him. Slimmed the body, rounded the chin, shaped the hat, tweaked the hands, shaved off the epaulettes (I'm not sure about the arms though, they could maybe do with being moved in by a block). "TS Slim"... on reflection not as catchy, but appropriate.

I quite like how he worked out... although I'm not exactly sure how tall he's going to end up. I need to chat with Ma, since I know she'll be able to look at the image and tell me.

I'm also not exactly sure how to arrange them for a finished piece. Like I said, I was thinking about just one long row, but if they're only short little things I was wondering about doing a whole field of them... I mean there's nothing quite like getting over ambitious...

Maybe I just need to start off with one, see if I have the time, energy and enthusiasm to actually work on cross-stitch at all before I start on a bigger piece. I wonder if Ma has any of those blank cross-stitch bookmarks...

In unrelated news, I did my tax earlier (bless you e-tax)... three little words... Biggest. Rebate. Ever. According to the computer program anyway. So that could quite possibly be my computer money... woohoo...

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