One Man's Trash...

This may sound strange. Over the past year I've received quite a few gifts from anonymous strangers. I've never actually seen anyone do it, I usually just come home and something has been thrown over my wall or left by my front door.  I remember the first time it happened. I came home from a night out and there were two rusty lawn chairs sitting by my door with a scribbled note. "TO SASHA FROM A SECRET ADMIRER."
I later found out it was Bob, a nice older man who lives in the neighborhood and was also friends with the former tenant. The first time I met Bob on the beach he mistook me for my sister.  He was building a portal to the fourth dimension in the form of a large mound of sand on which he would sit in lotus position. Bob likes to feed the seagulls every day and wears aluminum foil under his cap "You know, for the aliens. Just in case." That was the only gift mystery ever solved.

I've also received a Moroccan tile side table, a kite in the shape of an octopus, a black folding wooden table, an unfinished painting of chairs, a tatami mat, a drawing of our house, and a rusty old file cabinet. Some I kept, some I threw out.

This cabinet I chose to keep. Initially it was a sad gray color, but I slapped on a few coats of blue paint I had left over from painting my table. After a few months I got bored and decided to turn it into a new project.  I thought back to an old trunk I had when I was little that was completely covered with old pieces of lace and drawings. The one element I always remembered was a card with a picture of a mermaid. Underneath her was written "La Sirena." After a little Googling I found out it was a Mexican loteria card, and found a few decks after scouring Olvera Street in downtown LA. I arranged and glued the cards using rubber cement, then I wanted to finish it with a heavy gloss to age the cards a bit and seal everything in. My sister, who is a painter and pro with polyurethane, and also my glossing mentor, told me that it would take about thirty layers to achieve the glossiness I wanted. Ughhh...
When I start a project, I get very impatient and want to get it finished as soon as possible. So I layered that stuff on, thick. It crackled in the sun and got lumpy because I kept adding more on to even it out. I learned my lesson after a layer or two and stopped playing around with it, and really let it dry for a few days between each coat. As careful as I tried to be, the occasional drip mark or smudge was just inevitable. I didn't wind up doing thirty coats.