World of Warcraft Valentine's Day Gift

So it is April, and I'm posting about what I made my partner for Valentine's Day.  Yeah, I'm a bit behind on my blog updates.  But, my homework is up to date.  (Can't blame a college student for being busy with homework.  Right?)  Sorry, for the late post either way.  This year I was struggling with finding a way to show the special guy in my life how much I love him, and do it in a way that is uniquely him and me . . . on a very, very tight budget.  My health has been really bad since last December and I was unable to work the first few months this year because of it.  (I am much better now for those that are wondering.  Even if doctors still have no idea what happened or why.)  But I settled on making a counted cross stitch bookmark with a World of Warcraft theme.

 The first thing I needed to do was create the pattern to follow.  My guy is a "Horde for life" person, so naturally I had to use a Horde logo.  I personally don't have any real pull toward either faction other than I like playing with Dustin so, I play Horde.  I also have some Alliance characters.  I play Pandaren.  I am quite happy on either side.  If you would like this pattern modified for Alliance or with a Hearth Stone feel free to message me, and I will see what I can do to make that happen for you if you are unable to modify the pattern yourself.  >^.~<

I pulled this off of the Blizzard Gear web page, but it looks like they no longer have it posted.  Otherwise I would have posted a link.  This is what I used to pull the Horde logo from.

I then took this file and edited it so I had a cut out of the Horde logo.

Lok'Tar Ogar!

From here I put this into my graph paper file and then made it slightly transparent so that I could see the the lines from the graph paper.  I then filled in the corresponding spots to make my logo.

Every crafter need to have graph paper.  Especially if you ever plan to make your own pattern.  I've used it countless times for cross stitch, kitting, and other things.  It comes in very handy.  I created this file years ago, and I still pull it out when I start a new project.

Your typical 100 X 50 graph paper.  Feel free to download and use this for your own purposes.

If you don't play World of Warcraft there is an annual event called "Love is in the Air" that corresponds with the week of Valentine's Day.  There is an item you can buy during this time called a "Bag of Heart Candies".  One of the heart candies reads "I'll follow you all around Azeroth".  This was perfect for my Valentine's Day gift while being both equally nerdy and referencing actual game content.  I found a font I liked, and followed the same steps I did for the logo to make the rest of the pattern.  On a note about text with patterns:  make sure each instance of the letter matches.  (Such as all your "A" need to be the same.)   There are other things that need to match up also.  If you look at the "E" and the "F" here you will notice the similarities.  Much like the "R," "D," "O," and "U" all have similar characteristics.

And here we have the finished pattern.  The center of the pattern is the red line between the Horde logo and the text.

The fabric I opted to use was unbleached.  I felt that it had a more Horde-ish feel too it.

This is is my fabric choose.  I would have preferred a 16 or 18 count, but they only had bleached white in those counts at the store.

I always mark the center lines on my fabric with a color of thread that is completely unrelated to anything I will actually be using in my work.  I also normally will put masking tape around the edges of the fabric so that it won't fray.  But, in this instance the more frayed the better.  That way it would look more warn and battle damaged.

Sorry, it may be difficult to see the green thread, but this is what it should look like.

My guy likes shiny things.  So I used one strand each of DMC E321 and DMC 817 for the red, and DMC 310 and E310 for the black.  This is what it looked like before I did any back stitching.  As you can tell I also added a bit of extra fabric around the edges.  I added 10 squares from the edge of the design on each side.

You can see a bit of how the shiny thread will catch the light.  It looks amazing in firelight.

I did a black back stitch around the Horde logo, but left the lettering as is.  I also took out the green guild stitching I put in at the beginning.

And here is the finished bookmark.

I added my initials and the year in the lower right hand corner of the bookmark.  This is completely optional if you wanted to do something similar.  And there you have my nerdy rendition of Valentine's Day gift giving 2015 in April.  It was finished in time for the actual Valentine's Day gift giving . . . the blog update was not.