Around the Christmas season, the dollar bins at Target are a godsend. Usually packed with fun-but-useless things throughout the year, the holidays are when they really shine. Filled with everything from shitty stocking stuffer toys to Christmas candy to decorations. Hell, last year, I bought my tiny desktop tree from there. I'd wager I spend a good fifteen percent of my holiday shopping budget on dumb crap from these bins. Which leads me to my newest subject.
I really couldn't pass up this collection of Christmas-themed crafts once I saw them looking so lonely in the dollar bin. They needed a good home. One that I could provide, I figured. Plus, at a dollar a piece, they were a steal! I've dealt with crafts before on this site, I figured this article would be a snap. How wrong I was.
We'll start with the Brilliant Foil Poster. This is like a sister poster style to the fabled black velvet art posters. I have a storied history with those, but that's best left for another article. The art on this one is pretty basic, featuring Santa presenting a gift to a little girl (I think) while surrounded by floating candies. Perhaps they're ghost confections, I don't really know. All I know is that they're freaking me out.
This is about as far as I got with the coloring. Normally, I'd be all about coloring for days, but the shitty markers provided in the kit made it quite a chore. Just the little I got done took me 15 minutes of labored coloring. I gave up, and I don't regret a thing.
Here we have the Santa-shaped Ready To Color Wood Kit. I don't know why I buy so many wood kits. They just seem to find me. This is the third I've picked up this year, which makes it three more than I've ever bought in my lifetime. I'm afraid I'll look back at this year as the year of the Wood Kits.
Coloring in Santa was pretty easy. I'm really glad that the ink likes to go with the grain of the wood, because the way I color likes to ruin other things. See, I make an outline around where I intend to color, so I don't go outside the lines, then I kind of go crazy with scribbles inside that line. With this wood kit, you can't even tell I suck at coloring!
Plus, I love the "HO HO HO" embedded in his beard. Five stars. Great job, whoever made this. I'm not looking it up. I threw away the packaging already.
Next up is the Paint-By-Number set. Man, I was excited for this one. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was paint-by-number sets. I had four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles paint-by-number posters hanging in my bedroom for the longest time. They were amazing and amazingly easy. I hadn't done any paint-by-number kits since I was a child, though, so I could go into this with a fresh mind. Bring it on.
And this is as far as I got. This is fucking ridiculous. The paint wells aren't actually numbered, rather they are numbered on the package and God help you if they fall out, like they did for me. Plus, they want you to mix colors to make new ones and blah blah blah I'm far too lazy for that. Jeez, either give me the colors you want me to paint with, or leave 'em out.
Let's just say I finished that one. It'll be our little secret.
Lastly, we've got the one I've been waiting for. Presenting the Snowman 3-D Foam Mosaic Creature. Oh man, with a name like that, it can really do no wrong, could it? Oh, how wrong I was. The instructions were the most vague thing in the history of really vague things. They literally consisted of two sentences, one telling me to put it together like the picture on the box, and the other telling me it didn't come with glue. Wonderful.
This is about as far as I got when I first got the urge to quit. I powered through it. I didn't want to be left with something that looked like a balding preschool-friendly version of Pinhead from Hellraiser. Plus, I figured if I was going through with this article, I should at least half-ass it. Posting an article only quarter-assed just looks bad on me.
Trouble. The kit comes with all the facial features of a snowman (the coal for the mouth, etc.), but they require some assembly. Namely, that orange piece of foam is supposed to be rolled up and stuck on the face as the carrot nose. I use Dollar Store glue, which has never failed me until right now. This won't hold for shit. Dollar store glue, you've failed me for the first time. I still love you, though. I don't hold grudges.
But still, what am I gonna do about this carrot nose?
Meet Eduardo, The Christmas Duck. He's the official unofficial mascot of Sentient Vending Machine's 2011 Christmas Season. He's a little bug-eyed, but he means well, and you'll come to love him as I do.
I'd come up with a more clever way to end this article, but it's seven in the morning and this article is already too long. So...cheers?
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