Shoebox Adventures Part Two: Still Fishy! By Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

Part One of this tutorial showed how to create a fish from pieces of a cardboard shoebox. It was Kraft brown, except for the eye (a scrap from a gel print plus a button) and the vintage shoelace tag from which it was hanging, a minimalist approach to mixed media. I asked for feedback: Should I keep going or leave it as-is. ‘Keep going’ won, so I did.

I took apart the individual sections, glued pieces of gel prints onto each one, wrapped to the back so the edges are covered, and reassembled the fish. I added an eyelid cut from one of the gel prints and made lips from the end of a zipper I’d used for something else.

I also reconfigured the hanging loop and added another piece of the zipper as an accent at the top of the side fin. I removed the original side fin, a cardboard rectangle, because the gel print had the feel of a fin. I didn't mind losing that dimensional element.

As to the tail fin, I got lucky! One of my gel prints had a fan-like pattern that had the feel of a fin. PERFECT!

How about the back? Glad you asked! I traced around the fish to make a newsprint paper pattern, then cut a single piece of heavy chipboard about a half-inch smaller than the pattern to glue to the back of the finished fish.

I thought about doing some stamping and more collage but for now the fish is making me happy as is.

Should Part Two be the final stage, or should I keep going??? One of my friends thinks the fish needs eyelashes (after all, it's got orange lipstick, right? Another said sparkly scales. Please weigh in!

Here’s how it looked ‘Before’ and another peek at ‘After’:

YOUR TURN

If you created a fish, animal or something else from a shoebox last week, now it’s time to add torn or cut gel prints, collage papers or whatever else you think would be fun.

Paint and stencil directly onto the cardboard if you prefer.

SUPPLIES

Gel printing plate
Acrylic paints
Brayer
Stencils or other textures
Lightweight white printing paper
Parts of a zipper or other collage elements
Paper glue