I'm better at crafting...

than I am at blogging, apparently. I really have been working on projects (although finishing them is, as always, the bane of my existence), but because they were all "in-process" rather than what I like to call "done" I figured I would wait until I actually had something to show for all my hard work.

I got lots of great Christmas presents this year. Seriously, my loved ones spoiled me rotten with the types of things they knew I would adore. My sweet son, told I needed new earbuds, bought me ones emblazoned with Kermit the Frog eyes. My manfriend (there has GOT to be a better term for this. No joke.) showered me with coelocanths and new bass string and embroidery patterns and an antique banjolele. And the delightful Ms. S. got me this. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It need a frame worthy of it, though. S. couldn't find one she thought was suitable, and told me she'd leave it up to me. She mentioned that she thought that a Mexican folkart style one would be perfect.

So I made this one.

I got the frame at the White Elephant on a half-price day, so I think I paid $0.50 for it. I also got Dolly Parton's greatest hits on vinyl that day, but that's neither here nor there. I took the time to sand the frame, which generally I am far to impatient to do. Good thing I had a new Dolly Parton record to get me through! It also took me two Wanda Jackson records, all of Willie Nelson's Red-Headed Stranger, The Stray Cat's Rant 'n' Rave, and the first half of the first side of Kenny Rogers' The Gambler. That is a TERRIBLE album.

It took me a few days to decide what color I wanted the frame itself to be, so in the meantime, I took out my stash of glitter craft foam - an obsession begun when I was turning HRH into a comic book character for Halloween - and began cutting out a sacred heart. Well, first, I spent about seventeen gazillion hours looking at Mexican folkart online and pinning the shit out of it. THEN I cut a sacred heart of glittery craft foam. And then I decided that it looked cheese-tastic and faintly commercial, so I painstakingly drew and cut a Shure-55 style mic head to paste over it.

Once that was done I decided to match the color of the Gocco print in the paint and did the whole damn thing twice over in what my son referred to as TARDIS blue. There are a startling number of items in my house that are precisely this shade of cobalt.

The next conundrum was what to use for embellishment. I had chosen the deep frame specifically because of the possibilities of gluing weird shit on and calling it art. What weird shit, though? I loved the idea of bottlecaps, so I charged Zed with the task of bringing me home some. I found the perfect 45 record clipart on Etsy (from here)but couldn't figure out how to make my ancient and cranky Macbook resize it. So I just used the label portions covered with these awesome epoxy stickers that were made just to fit inside a bottlecap. Then I used fine black glitter glue around the edge and into the ridges. I wish I had flattened the caps first, but I didn't realize I wanted to until they were already glued to the frame. Then I liberally interspersed the bottlecaps with star-shaped and regular tiny sequins. I went back on forth on the idea of adding the flowers, but ultimately decided it seemed more finished with them. Then I hung that bitch on the wall right next to my front door. I can't stop grinning when I look at it.

Bam! Two finished! It only took me five weeks! Oy...

I did a good job working on a great project I'm excited about, though. I decided to send 28 handmade postcards in the month of February - yes, I know this is a leap year, don't judge - but instead of sending them all to one person, I went with seven friend each receiving a postcard from me that I mail every Friday this month. I put the first batch in the mail yesterday. I was too excited to mail them to take pictures, because I'm super lame. I won't count this project finished until the last seven cards reach their destinations, and I hope that the friends I chose like being a part of my year-long adventure.

That's it til next time, mes petites choux. I have a question, though. Would you rather I updated no matter the status of my various projects, or do you prefer seeing the destination rather than the journey? Also, how on EARTH did that Smilodon drag that enormous coelocanth out of the ocean's depths?

Have I mentioned how dearly I adore the man who bought these for me?