cross-stitch - anyone designed their own pattern?

[loomer]

I loved doing cross-stitch when I was younger, and would like to take it up again - but my tastes have changed (a lot) since my teenage years, and I can't find any patterns that I like (they all seem to be rather twee and 'pretty' for my liking).

I would really like to start with something fairly abstract (I'm thinking along the lines of a Bridget Riley picture), and I'm thinking that it should be fairly easy to draw something like this out myself... but I don't have a clue where to start. persumably I'd need a big sheet of graph paper? And some coloured pencils to colour the boxes in??

Do you think I'm being a bit overambitious - I'm a graphic designer by trade, so I have a reasonable ability to visualise patterns.

Or alternatively can anyone point me in the direction of 'funky' cross-stich kits?

I am not particularly artistic, but I managed to do this and it was very successful, (even though I say so myself )

I just used graph paper and drew out what I wanted and followed that. It is really very simple. If I can do it, I am sure you can.

gimp has a pluggin that converts pictures to cross stitch if you can get it installed.

their are a few photoshop tutorials that do this sort of thing as well.

Oh thanks - Photoshop would be ace, as I use that regularly for work (don't know why it didn't occur to me). I'm glad to hear that someone else has managed it the old-fashioned way too though!