Call Me the Beetle Mortician

Or don't, because my technique was very amateurish. :D

So, recently my rainbow stag beetle died and I was planning on making a memento mori necklace out of his body (which sounds very morbid when I think about it, but I assure you I had the best intentions). I went ahead and bought the resin on eBay as well as a soap mold to place him in. Of course I had a test run with a couple of buttons, but from that I saw that using resin was a bad idea:

1) Only one of the trials turned out well, whereas the other had a strange lumpy texture to it. I suppose some water must have gotten into it.
2) It stinks awfully. My whole house smelled strongly of the stuff for ages afterwards, and even with the protective plastic casings we could still smell it.
3) It's nasty. Along with the smell, dust from sanding gets into your eyes and lungs, making you feel like you've taken a shift at a Victorian workhouse, rather than making an innocent little necklace. And when it touches your skin? You feel like you're burning. Not good for jewelry.
4) It clouds up with fingerprints when you touch the finished thing.
5) It's far too big and chunky for a necklace.

With all those reasons, my project got put on the back burner. So instead, I thought about making a picture frame with it, which was a lot better. But when it died, its legs were curled up under its body, some were sticking out weirdly, and its inner wings were half out of its hard body; so I decided to don my mortician head and set about making it look more presentable. This wasn't hard, strangely enough.
All I needed was a small tub of boiled water, some tweezers, a cocktail stick, and some small nail scissors.
First I cut the wings off/clipped them so they weren't on show, and boiled some water with the kettle. Then I waited for it to cool for a few moments, and dangled the parts of the beetle that I wanted moving into the tub. Take care not to stick the whole thing in, as with most specimens the eyes will remain in the body, and I'm not sure whether they'll take boiling hot water too well.
Place the body onto some paper or kitchen roll, and move the legs gently with a cocktail stick so that they look natural. This should be quite easy, though take care as the legs may still be quite brittle.
If there is still some slight mold remaining (as I left this project quite late), dab at the patches with some surgical spirit on a cotton bud, and hopefully it shall come away. The outside of the beetle should be perfectly fine as it's so hard and tough. Any legs or antennae that fall off or get damaged can always be glued back on with super glue (I used gorilla glue rather successfully).
Finally, you can mount it on to some decorative paper into a picture frame, and make sure that it fits before you seal the frame with silicone glue.