Springtime Nyan Cat Dangly Keychain :D

An update :3 : Recently I was super excited to learn this little guy took second place in a spring-themed stitching contest! ^^! To see all of the participants' work you can check them out here: [link] (and you definitely should because they're all quite excellent! )


A little springtime-themed nyan cat dangly cross-stitch keychain He features a pastel rainbow, green frosting/sprinkles, and a tiny bunny on his side. :3

This was submitted to Stitching Pirate's awesome spring-themed stitch contest! ^^ [link]

Okay, now get ready because I'm going to ramble a lot >.>

I wanted to have a couple things attached to him, so I gave him the flowers and bunny-friend (who is an enlarged version of the one on his side).
Sorry for the two really bad detail shots - the bunny looks washed-out and the nyan cat isn't any bigger than it is in the other pictures >.> Photography is... not my strong suit D:

Here's a little bit about how this was made:
Obviously the basic nyan cat design was copy-pastaed off the well-known nyan cat sprite. Then I changed some coloring, removed a few of the sprinkles, and added in the bunny. The flowers I got from a website for free perler bead patterns: [link] (thank you so much! <3) The ones here are ever-so-slightly different than the original pattern - partially for balancing purposes with the metal ring. And then for the large bunny I enlarged the smaller one on nyan cat's side and added a few details. The only backstitching used was around the eyes/mouthes of the rabbits - I thought about back-stitching around everything, including for example the outside of the flowers, but since the original nyan cat sprite only has thick black outlining around the cat and nothing else, I decided nothing except him should be outlined. I didn't use any sort of pattern-maker or anything while doing this, just made it up as I went along.

To make the keychain part I used pliers to attach the metal links to each section. The metal links were looped through a hole I left in the outlining of the plastic. That's why the bunny has that plastic chunk sticking off the bottom of him, in case I decide to move the ordering around or add something else that chunk has the hole where the bottom link would go. I'm thinking about maybe adding more links between the bunny and the flowers, but for now I like it as is. :3 I also will be attaching some felt to the back of each piece for a little bit of protection ^^

I didn't run into too many problems while making this other than the usual, such as making a mistake and then having to go back and un-stitch, etc. D: I actually stitched the whole rainbow before I realized it was off by one so that was frustrating >.> Also the metalworking was a little difficult - opening and closing the links to attach the pieces hurts my fingers D: Also you have to be careful to not rip the plastic when trying to close the link after it's in the hole in the canvas, otherwise you have to make a new piece T___T

I've been working on it on and off for about a month now. In total it was about 12 hours of stitching, but that's mostly because I kept having fix mistakes.

To download the pattern you can go here: [link], (and a larger picture of the work can be seen here), but for reference the colors I used were:
310 (black) for outlining/the eyes
B5200 (white) for detailing in the eyes
605 for nyan's cheeks
647 for nyan's body
211 for the bunny's body
3716 for the pink in the rainbow
3341 for the coral in the rainbow
727 for the yellow in the rainbow
955 for the green in the rainbow
747 for the blue in the rainbow
554 for the lavender in the rainbow
704 for the frosting
701 for the sprinkles
745 for the poptart body
907 for the flower stems
603 for the flowers
973 for the center of the flowers
Stitched with DMC floss on 14-count Darice clear plastic mesh.

For the pieces of the keychain the dimensions are:
nyan: 43w x 21h ~3.5in x 1.5in
flowers: 23w x 6h ~ 1.75in x 0.5in
bunny: 10w x 14h ~ 0.75in x 1in

Okay, okay, I'm finally done rambling! ;____;