That’s right. I’m still not totally finished with Medicine Dan. It’s always something! This time, I’m being held up with the last little details. Sometimes, things can’t always go your way. But art is a challenge I usually welcome. Usually.

All the books are bound. It took me a few days to feel satisfied with them all. This is me; I never like what I complete right when I finish it. I have to warm up to it. It’s probably because I’ve had my nose in it for too long. But I like them now. Not much “bothers” me about them, but I’ll always be a harsh critic of my own work and my own self, for that matter.

The transparent Plexi boxes came, but one was damaged, so the place is sending me a couple new ones. That may take a while. They were slow-going on the eight they sent in the first place.

But that’s not what’s holding me up because there are seven in perfect condition that I can sell. The issue is the bands I’m making that strap around the book. This is to lift them out of the box since they fit snug as a bug inside the boxes.

The strap is a pretty simple invention that’s made up of a ribbon, a hair tie, and a button. I already had the hair ties (little ponytail holders). I bought some white ribbon and picked out some cool metal buttons on Etsy.

A week later, the Etsy seller still hadn’t shipped the buttons. I even paid extra for faster shipping! On top of that, I promised the first pre-paid buyer of the book that I’d send it to him before this coming weekend. I figured I’d have everything by then and sew up the first strap in an hour. And next week, I’m out of town.

I got zero communication from the Etsy seller. Nothing. So, I ordered other buttons from someone else, who shipped them right away. Those will be here tomorrow. But then the first buttons finally shipped yesterday. Gah! Now I’ll have a choice of two, but one will arrive before the others.

In the meantime, I started making a sample of the strap to see what it was going to look like. Not so good! The ribbon I got is too thin, and it buckles when pulled by the hair tie, which is also too skinny. I needed thicker, ribbed ribbons and thicker hair thingies. The hair ties I needed were pretty specific. I really had to search! They needed to be about 2mm but not too big around. See what I mean? I’m such an anal-retentive bastard.

Lastly, the finishing touch is the feather. A little feather gets tucked into the strap, and that’s just because it’s what I pictured when I closed my eyes and saw this book completely finished.

I can’t wait until I have one done so I can take a picture of it instead of explaining all this in words.