Before and After – Midas’s Chicken Basket by Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

Once upon a time (AKA an embarrassingly long time ago) I bought a set of papier mache chicken-shaped baskets. The largest one (shown) is almost a foot tall, the other five fit neatly inside. Over the last decade or so I’ve given the little guys to friends at Easter, stuffed with candy – of course, but I never wanted to part with the big one, even though I never used it. 

After turning a cardboard shoe box into a fish for The Queen’s Inkling a couple of weeks ago I was on a roll with up-cycling…It was time to give the chicken a new look! I went for the Midas touch. I think it’s going to be perfect for holding craft sponges or perhaps a jar with paintbrushes and rulers. Or candy…Probably candy…

Here’s how it looked before I started:

Here’s what I did:

1. Paint the entire chicken with black gesso.

2. Using an almost dry stiff-bristle brush, highlight the chicken with Emperor’s Gold paint (a warm rose gold rather than yellow gold). Add a heavier coat of paint to the comb, wattle, sleeves and feet, but leave some of the black visible for a vintage effect.

3. Give the chicken a glitzy necklace. (Shown: 12” embellishment from Prima Marketing that I found at The Queen’s Ink, and it’s even my birthstone!).

4. Adhere filigree flowers for the eyelashes and cat’s eye stickers for the eyeballs. Use snippets cut from an Xtreme Adhesive Tab to secure the flowers and gem glue for extra hold on the cat’s eye stickers.

5. Paint the interior with a light contrasting color if needed. (I left it the original blue.)

Here’s what you can do:

1. Given that this chicken from Wimpole Street Creations probably hasn’t been available in twenty years, you’ll have to find another interesting animal-shaped basket. Scour the thrift shops, check out your own attic, see what’s left in the after-Easter sale bin at the grocery or drug store. If you can’t find one, make one! (Start with a plastic bowl, some air dry paper clay and a piece of wire.) 

2. Start with ANY solid color. Just because I chose black gesso doesn’t mean you have to! Substitute silver, bronze, or any other metallic color for the second coat, or use a color that coordinates with whatever color you used first. Purple paint with olive iridescent paint would be dramatic, pale yellow paint brushed with white would look shabby chic, and so on…It’s YOUR basket! 

3. Decorate the eyes, add jewelry, and dude it up as you see fit. 

SUPPLIES

• 2” wide stiff-bristle paintbrush (Seth Apter’s favorites are available at The Queen’s Ink)
• Black gesso
• Gold acrylic paint
• A papier mache basket shaped like an animal
• 12” Bohemian Jewels (Prima Marketing)
• Two filigree flowers
• Xtreme Adhesive Tabs (Tombow)
• Non-stick scissors to cut Tabs
• Gem glue
• Two 7mm Cat’s Eye stickers (Stanislaus Imports, www.lasioux.com)