Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!

Mario has been stitched, framed, and gifted!

This is the first piece I have completed on my own from a blank canvas. For a look I how I transformed a white canvas to a drawn/colored picture of Mario, check out this post.

With a completed picture, I started stitching Mario is continental with perl cotton. Simple, easy, and perfectly 2D for Mario. The background is an alternating scotch stitch. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of Mario in the making because I stitched it all over summer break when I was laid up with the flu and my camera was stuck at work.

While working on Mario, I decided that this would be a piece that I would not keep for myself. I thought it would be a great gift for Justin’s birthday. So, I had him in mind when I decided how to finish the piece. I know his walls are already pretty well-decorated, and I wasn’t sure how much he would want to display this little piece of nerdome for all to see on his wall, so I considered a few options. One option would be to finish Mario as a pillow. This was actually comparable in price to framing (which really surprised me…and since I’ve recently taken over the financial responsibility for my stitching, the cost of needlepointing is something I’ve thought about a lot more recently). However, how much does a 20-something bachelor really want with a pillow. Option 2 was to finish it in a regular frame, but with little to no matting to keep the piece small and accompanied by a stand. This gave him a lot of flexibility about how and where he wanted to display the piece. Best of all, with this framing he could still hang it on the wall if that’s what he preferred. So, I chose a simple black metal frame and picked up a simple black easel from Michael’s.(I apologize for the strange angle, but I was trying to avoid flash reflections…)

Of course,  a piece as nerdy as this requires an equally nerdy packaging. Please note, when you pull the belly tabs, you discover that the robot swallowed a 5 year-old’s birthday party decorations.

Justin seemed to really enjoy and appreciate this gift. Of course, my bribe of  dinner and ice cream last night should be enough to get him to say he liked it no matter what 🙂