Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Elephant

[fabunobo.livejournal.com]

My trashy neighbor - the one who doesn't have windows but only plastic and/or plywood over the holes in his house where one might expect to find a window - has this really fabulous elephant plant stand/statue on his front porch. Imagine THIS but think about a more Hindu style version with colorful ornamentation, etc. I can't find a similar picture online. I've been coveting it for years. He had it for sale in one of his frequent yard sales a while back but was asking like, fifty dollars or something for it. Meanwhile, he uses it as a doorstop or something and it is like, sitting outside. I know it's totally un-Buddhist of me to covet this statue and think about how this man has no idea how lovely and treasured this beautiful piece of art should be. Y'all know if this statue were mine, it would be sitting upon a velvet cushion on an alter with incense and candles alight around it. But it's not mine. It's his. And material possessions such as this are unimportant to me ... *Groan!*

I've been hunting for a similar elephant-ish statue to place atop the Victorian built-in in our kitchen. Something like our neighbor's elephant is EXACTLY what we need. It would just set the kitchen off perfectly. I've looked everywhere around town. I even called ekchuah and asked her about a store we visited in Columbus OH that had this type of thing. Hey ekchuah, do they have a website for that store? I got a wild idea to quell my covetousness, I would fashion my own elephant out of foam core, paint it the kitchen's trim color gray, and use beads - which I've always got kicking around in mounds - to ornament it in a Hindu style. Using my Dremel, I cut out a design, painted it, covered some areas with glue, and poured on the beads. I thought that I could make an easy stand, and place the elephant atop the built-in. Well, here's my experimental elephant.

drdjmike and I concur that although this turned out cute, it is leaning a bit toward the "macaroni art project" style and will look a bit goofy in our modernist blood-red and powder gray kitchen. Hmm ... I should also post this in the craftgrrl.