SOS Challenge #27 - Christmas/Winter

This week's challenge at Shopping Our Stash is to make something Christmas- or Winter-related. Think: penguins, polar bears, stockings, wreaths, angels, presents, snow, ice skating, tree, Santa, nativity scenes, etc! LOTS of options for you!

My card for this challenge may be the ultimate in stash-shopping. Here's the card:

and now I shall bore you with the details of the stash involved. First, I cut five (5) gingerbread men with my A Muse Studio die I bought a while ago and have never used. I cut them from a piece of Core'dinations card stock that is chocolate/brown on one side and a cool minty green on the other side. Why 5? Because 5 fit and I disappeared that remnant from the Heaplet.

Next we'll talk about buttons. A while back I had this idea I needed to organize the bazillion little packages of buttons to get them out of the craft closet and out somewhere so I could see them and maybe even use them. So I took each of the 20+ packages of 40+ buttons each and dumped them all into this jar:

The problem comes when you're looking for one color, and have to sift through all of these to find that one color. I needed black. I started by pouring them into my palm, but when that looked about to overflow, I resorted to this:

Yeah, that's a few buttons. Here's all I needed:

So in this case, maybe organization wasn't the best idea. Or maybe I need to get over it.

I next selected black buttons in sets of 3 until I had them on all 5 gingerbread men:

The rest got dumped back into the jar.

I next glued them down and added the mouths with Liquid Pearls and the eyes with black enamel:

Here's the enamel stuff I used for the eyes:

and one of the drying guys up close and personal:

Then I went on to gather the rest of the card parts. I was following this sketch (last week's sketch from Stamping 411):

As all that other stuff dried, I tried to think of how to make that white panel not so ... white. Then I remembered this stuff I bought and haven't used yet:

So I sprayed it all over the white piece after I'd stamped the sentiment, and it dried like this:

But wait - there's more! YES, there IS!

Here's the card again:

See that back panel? It matches the back side of the gingerbread man Core'dinations. Why am I telling you this? Because I ran out of that color of the Chocolate Core'dinations, but I checked out the Beach Core'dinations (whaaaat, you're surprised I have all of them? Pffth) and they have the same colors in that pack, just a different "other" side. I was home free!

AND, I used one of my SU folders on it and sanded it to try and bring out the other color. I love how it turned out.

AAAAAAND, I used my crimper (had to blow off the dust) to make the black horizontal strip, and the ribbon is A Muse, from the stash. Now even you'll have to admit that's a lotta stash on one card, eh? :)

Now it's your turn! Go into your stash, find some neglected Christmas/Holiday/Winter/whatever stuff, make a card, then come link us at Shopping Our Stash so we can see what you've made!

Thanks for stopping by!