Santas, Santas Everywhere!

This weekend I was bitten by the Finishing Bug (please don't tell the little Thanksgiving piece that I still haven't finished stitching...).  First, I made a new quilted banner thing to replace the "Be Ye Thankful" piece.

The "Believe" sign came from JoAnn Fabrics, and the little blue Santa was a thrift store find.  The stitched piece is Country Garden Stitchery's "Here Comes Santa Claus," stitched several years ago.

And then I decided to finish up Astor Place's "Red St. Nicklaus," which meant a bit of varnish, paint, polyurethane, glue, and swearing...

....until I arrived at this.

(The color in that final picture got a bit washed out.)  But I love this!  The plywood tree came from JoAnn Fabric last year, and has been sitting in my "finishing supplies" corner for a loooong time.  I stained it with walnut varnish first, making sure to get all of the trunk bits, and smudged varnish randomly on the rest of the wood.  Then I painted the main parts of the tree with a green acrylic (I skipped some of the center, since I knew I was attaching the stitching over that).  As an afterthought, I dotted the edges of the "branches" with white to look like snow.  Once that was mostly dry,  I sprayed it with a thin coat of polyurethane, just as a protectant.  While I waited for the poly to dry, I cut my triangular mat board, attached some batting, and glued (yes, I glued - trying to lace a triangle just made me angry) the stitched piece to that.  Then I glued the mounted stitching to the tree, found some pretty wired twisted cord in my stash, and topped it all off with the little gold star.  He makes me so happy!

My daughter asked, as I was crowing over this little guy, "Mom, how many Santas do we NEED, anyway?"  Cynical little eight year old!  I told we needed ALL the Santas, because I think he is cute and magical.  She gave me that look that combines bemusement and disgust in a way only an 8 year old can.  LOL