Santa is Jolly Again!

Remember a few posts ago when I asked you for your help on getting the Ol' Elf's 'Jolly' back?  Well, here's how he looks, now:

Um, that would be a Big-Fat Jolly!  A look at the transformation...



My $1 Santa got new fur trim (about $2 for a large piece), Christmas lights $1.50, which I strung on both floral wire and gold string, a small scrap of red fabric for his hat that I ended up hand stitching together.  I still may swap out the truck, I saw a pack of "wrapped" Christmas gift ornaments at the Dollar store that I think I'd like better to go with the shine of the bulbs.  The fur was hot-glued on, it was quite shaggy, so it got trimmed.  It was really a matter of what I could find, I just looked in the aisles at JoAnns to see what the right scale looked like.  This wasn't my first choice in fur trims, either, but it was the easiest to purchase.

He seems quite at home with his other Santa buddies.  (You can't win for losing--I had a nice sunny day to work with and it blew out the photos.)  It's pretty much impossible to tell from a distance which Santa came from the thrift store.

Here's a tour around the hutch--I really tried to work with the photos.

I did the very top a little different this year.  Poinsettias were piled up, and it's hard to tell, but with the red up there, it needed yellow or gold.  It got some yellow boxes on the left and an oversized (8" dia.) gold bulb on the right, from this angle it appears to be just peeking over the top.

I wanted to get this shot to make it look like Santa was standing on a balcony.  It kind of looks like "Romeo, Romeo, send up some cookies!"

Is it just me, or does he actually look happier?