Cross-Stitch Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo spent four years painting the Sistine Chapel, but the work of art below took its creator eight:

Yes, that's the Sistine Chapel, rendered lovingly in cross-stitch by obsessed crafter Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts (slideshow here). It measures 40" x 80", or around three feet by seven feet and depicts pretty much every nook and cranny of the Sistine ceiling, not just the famous parts. That is an awful lot of tiny Xes to make with needle and thread; she worked on it for about an hour a day for eight years - I'm sure if the pope told Michelangelo, "Hey, Mike, what do you think of needle and thread instead of paint?" he'd have passed on the job. Cross-stitch isn't for the faint-hearted, and anything larger than a pillow is for mad dogs and englishmen.