Once upon a time, I found some skeleton garlands in the clearance bin of a party store. I thought they were decent skeletons and they were so cheap, I couldn’t pass up buying a couple of strands.

Even though I had no use for them.

Several years later, I find myself working on a project that desperately needs a skeleton. And glory be, the skeletons on those garlands are the perfect size.

But, boyo — they have a lot more flashing and leftover mold junk than I remembered.

I decided to take an X-acto knife to some of the flashing to see if I could make one of the skeletons more presentable. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the excess junk on the skeleton was actually a thick coating of “paint” — paint that started coming off in chunks.

And underneath that paint was a super nice (for the price, anyway) and highly detailed, bright white skeleton.

Yes, it was a bit of pain getting rid of the glopped on paint and then trimming the flashing from the underlying skeleton and then finishing up the skelly with a bit of staining… but I believe the final product was absolutely worth the effort.

How grand is that???

No, I can’t tell you any more about the project (not yet, anyway).