And then there were two!...........

 

Yes,  another Secret Santa is done.  "Naughty or Nice" has now been stitched and finished and I'm moving on to #3 later on today.  I'd say my stitching mojo is back and I couldn't be more thrilled.  It is really aggravating to think of the wasted time when I could have been stitching....but that's all behind me now so I'll move on.  There were a few changes with this Santa...the most noticeable one would have to be the missing packages that should be around Santa's head.  I make a last-minute decision to leave them out as this Santa has a huge presence in my mind and the presents were distracting me.  I also made a couple of color changes, for the gloves...I didn't have the green metallic that Cathy called for and I looked up a variety of Santa's and there were 4 colors used for the gloves, red, white or black, or flesh-colored.  With the beard, you wouldn't notice white gloves, and with his red jacket,,  you wouldn't notice red gloves.   I needed contrast so black ended up the color.  I changed the color of his buckle from WDW Curry simply because in the first Santa Cathy used metallic gold and so I used it.    As with the first Santa, I used a triangle of color a little darker than the face shade, to make a nose and the cheeks.  Because I couldn't use my usual embellishments to enhance this piece I had to go with different stitches to bring dimension to it.  So I Satin Stitched the border of his jacket as well as his  hat band.  I made a mustache which I then attached to his face and used Turkey Work to create the beard.  As I was patting myself on my back after gluing the front to the back I realized I hadn't put a hanger on it nor had I attached the beads...Yikes!  With the glue already dry enough  I didn't want to take a chance on pulling the backing off.  Finally, I came up with a plan and I was able to get the beads on, (thank God I hadn't done the cording yet so that I could hide the red thread) but the red ribbon hanger was just attached to the back which is covered in red scrapbook paper so it's not a glaring mistake, but aggravating.  Lesson learned hopefully.  Now on to the next one.  Happy stitching folks.