I am no where as good as V, yours are awesome!!! 

   But I am proud of myself  

  It did take me over five hours to figure out how to make it but I finally found a cool site with what to download and another one how to paste and save the layers.  It's fun & frustrating to do but rewarding once you learn, it's easy!! 
Here are the two links I used for help...The first one is where I got the site for the pics and The GIMP program I used to create the avater.  
http://www.instructables.com/id/EGLD54F0CTEP287PD8/ 
The second, about one third of the way down the page has a good post/walkthrough by Green2.  
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=642&page=3 
Good luck to anyone trying to make your own!!   
Thanks to everyone for your compliments and advice.  I will work on a new one and try to save the pics on a lower resolution, as you suggested and see what more I can do!  

   This is fun!