Rather than checking LEGO stores and spending $8 or $16 for a cup of bricks, have you looked at bricklink? Presently I don't have anything in my store there but there are hundreds of users with stores carrying new and old sets and parts.When you see what you need that exists in the color you want, you can create want list to compile a complete shopping list, then use search by store to find store that has most of what you need. You can specify if you want to search only those on your country (ie USA only), on your contenient (North America or Europe) or worldwide so if you can find stores with most of what you need in the same country you live in, shipping will be a lot cheaper than buying across the sea.bricklink also has forum if you need help or suggestions.
Cute! For suggestions, the only small, iconic sprite I can think of at the moment is a Bonk smiley.
I just instructed my children to construct my headstone using Lego bricks...ugggghhhhhh... I requested a pixelated Princess Za + Bonk + Moonland Lego mural .........the smell...Ugghhh ...my stomach....
Pretty cool! While I enjoyed looking at the mosaic, I also enjoyed the other goodies on the shelves. Xbox, Wii, WiiU, Sega CD, Saturn, Master System, Genesis, PC, and of course TG16/PCE!
Let's see, we got Perl, PHP, C Programming books, some Unix, etc. Did you ever read 'em all ?? I used to buy them thinking it'd help for my jobs, but they wound up just sitting around and most learning was forced on-the-fly from the Internet or others. I have found my Intel x86 Assembly book still useful in recent years though.
I don't know what a "Lego Mosaic" is, if that's a specific product line or something but can't you back link those 16x16 plates to make bigger ones?