Sew distressing and improvisation

I decided to try and get ahead and preempt my son and his Christmas card demands. In past years he's decided to tell me he wants umpteen christmas cards with only a couple of days notice , so I have already started asking who he will want cards for, so far he is only sending 5. He did tell me he wants some blank mugs so they can be personalised, not sure where he thinks I can cunjure those from as as yet I'm not allowed to drive (post-op) and that might be a stretch too far for hubby and his weekend grocery shop.

There are 3 boy cards which he wants in traditional colours and 2 girly pink cards, so not my style. The images I have had approval for so far are manga santa and elf, anf fairy and gingerbread girl all from Sugar Nellie and Funky kits so expect to see those over the next few posts. Here is the first. 

I put him on a gold pearlised card , I know probably wasted on a teenage boy but hey can't drop the standards or son won't approve. I coloured with promarkers and added some rub ons for sentiment and stocking. The backing stocking paper was a magazine freebie last year mounted on green mirri card. I did try stitching with my new mini sewing machine but as yet I haven't sorted out the tension, it seems so much harder than my big multi stitch sewing machine, but I'll get there and it put the stitch hole spacings neatly speaced even if I didn't get the line quite straight. The improvisation is the thread, I had to use ordinary cotton as I did intend using some metalic thread that is in my embroidery box, quite a large box containing books , threads fabrics etc and on top of my cupboards so I was unable to lift it down , hence the improvisation so I tried to make up for it by doing chain stitch instead.

I would like to enter this card for the following challenges:-

Passion for promarkers-distressing and stitching

A spoonful of sugar-distressing

Moving along with the times-sketch layout

Frosted designs-distressing

Die cut dreams christmas challenge-anything goes