Perler Beads: Super Mario Kart

It's been a bit of a hectic week, including (among other things) a surprise dead starter in our car (which chose not the worst time to go out, so we have that to be grateful for). HOWEVER! I needed some cheering up yesterday and decided to make some sprites from my favorite racing game, Super Mario Kart. And then I had to finish the full set, because let's be honest - you can't just have one! You gotta catch 'em all... oh wait, wrong game.

Toad and Bowser

Mario and Yoshi 

Koopa and Luigi

With Princess leading the way...

No wait! Donkey Kong snuck past for a surprise win!

And here's the whole Super Mario Kart gang! 

What's your favorite iteration of Mario Kart? And who is your favorite character to race? Toad and Koopa were always highly sought after in our house growing up... and Mario and Luigi were the most reviled. (At least according to my memory.)

General Life Update

I have failed at blogging regularly as of late, but never fear! I've been working on lots of projects, just not ones I can post yet. In other words, we're nearing completion of all the perler bead sprite requests that spawned from Nathan's kickstarter, but I don't want to post them until they are in the hands of the owners. So expect some new Zelda, Breath of Fire, Earthbound, and more coming up! Plus I have a hankering to expand our Zelda wall, and I've come up with lots more ideas of stuff to make... including Portal turrets, experimenting with a 3D companion cube, Secret of Mana, Super Mario Kart, Wario's Woods, and some Earthbound sprites of our own... I guess my last post was way off, saying I was nearly done. :)

In other news, I finished reading all the Hugo nominees for this year, with the exception of Dance with Dragons because I didn't want to read the 3 books before it I haven't read yet in the series. (Game of Thrones was really good but I think I'll leave that series to those that prefer the dark gritty fantasy.) Here are my favorites, now that voting is closed (not that I could vote anyway, since we sold our tickets):

For my favorite novel nominee, Among Others by Jo Walton - I'd never heard of it but I really enjoyed it a lot. Deadline was my second favorite, but then, I picked Feed (to which Deadline is a sequel) for my favorite last year, so... not surprising. The rest were meh. (Except I didn't read Dance with Dragons so I can't comment on that one.)

For best novella, I really enjoyed "Kiss Me Twice" by Mary Robinette Kowal and "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson. The rest were all pretty good too, though I don't think I'll ever really "get" anything written by Cat Valente. My favorite novelette by far was "Ray of Light" by Brad Torgersen, and my favorite short story was "Movement" by Nancy Fulda.

I have also read Redshirts, The Long Earth, and The Hollow City recently, all of which I enjoyed. I just started Brent Weeks (The Way of Shadows) today, and I'm liking that so far as well.

I beat Final Fantasy VI finally (I tend to putter around a lot as I approach the end of long RPG's) and plan on replaying Link to the Past next. Other than that, it's just life as usual - work, kitchen experiments, staying up too late, and trying to do the best I can.

Perler Beads: The Legend of Zelda

I know this post has been much anticipated by many, and I apologize for taking so long to get it up. But hopefully it was worth the wait... The Legend of Zelda is finally up on my wall! Specifically, it's over the door, because I felt it was fitting to put it up near the key holder I made a while back.

The Legend of Zelda 1 and 2 (we may add more stuff from 2 later, but so far we just have Link and Error)

And my personal favorite, Link to the Past! We have Link holding up the big key, a chest, a palace guard, and Zelda herself. (I had a really hard time finding a Zelda sprite. I actually made mine based off of this one.)

Here's a wide shot of the whole thing. You can see the key holder on the side of the door.

Aside from Nathan's ongoing project to make every Pokemon, this concludes the vast majority of what I really wanted to make. So if you have any suggestions for what else we should do next, let me know! 

Perler Beads: Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island

At long last, my blogging hiatus has come to an end! I deeply apologize for my absence in the last month. I have no excuse... well, actually I do have two: I've been replaying Final Fantasy VI (GBA version), which has sucked up all my free time, and we ran out of black perler beads for about 2-3 weeks. (Remember how I said the closest store that had some was 30 min away? I called. They were out too. We finally ordered a ton online from the perler bead site and waited another week and a half for them to arrive.)

Anyway, before we move on to the glorious pictures, I wanted to let you know that my husband's kickstarter ends in THREE HOURS as of this post. So if you want to donate and get a free perler bead sprite, now's your chance! Here's the link!

Now for today's showcase: Yoshi's Island and Super Metroid! (You get double because there's only two sprites for each.)

Yoshi's Island: Yoshi with baby Mario, and flower-headed Shy Guy (and whoops, I cut off the leftmost row of beads on baby Mario... oh well)

And another shot of Yoshi's Island sprites next to the wiggler from Super Mario World (still a huge favorite of mine)

Super Metroid: Sammus and the baby Metroid

I don't think that picture really gives you a good sense of scale though... So here's another shot of them next to a Super Nintendo cartridge of Super Metroid to put things in perspective.

Yes, that's right. The baby Metroid took NINE trays. No amount of sticky tack  holds this thing up on our wall; we had to resort to two small nails.

I can't take credit for any of these though... Nathan did every one of them!

Next up is the long-awaited Zelda collection... they're all done and waiting to be put up on the wall.