Cheep Cheep Valentine's Day "Box"

Well look at me, blogging two days in a row! :P In February Sean and I made a Cheep Cheep (the cute little fish from Super Mario) Valentine's day "box" out of a plastic fish bowl and it was a big hit! He won most creative in his age group at our homeschool group's Valentine's party, but more importantly we had a lot of fun making it together! In true procrastinating-perfectionist behavior, I waited until the night before the party to buy the supplies, and then kept working on it until satisfied.

(Source)

This is the Cheep Cheep Sean chose to model his "box" after. He liked the mohawk/fin! We already had the plastic fish bowl, and only needed a few inexpensive items from Michael's to complete our task. We bought a few acrylic craft paints, chenille wire stems for the yellow fins, and sticky-back felt squares for the white fins. Please excuse the blurry cell photo, it's the only one I got while we worked. Oops. Sean painted the body red, and then I painted the eyes on top and pink mouth along the rim of the bowl. I drew the white fin shape on paper plates, and then used that as a template to cut the felt.

We stuck the felt onto the paper plate fin for added support, and then taped it to the bowl (after the paint was dry). Making the Mohawk fin and tail was easy, it was just a matter of twisting the chenille stems into the proper shape and then taping it onto the bowl. I used yellow washi tape to blend in. Oh and you can see the Valentines we made in the above picture too. They had a fish on the front and the phrase "You're o-fish-ally awesome" inside. Sean painted the ocean waves and signed the backs of them. They fit nicely into the Cheep Cheep's mouth for transport to the party! As you can see below, we had to make a base for the fish because otherwise it would roll to the side when set down...Sean painted a cardboard box blue and I painted his name on the front and "Cheep Cheep" on the sides. That's his really proud smile on the right by the way! Love it.

All the kids at the party made really amazing boxes! Sean's favorite was R2-D2 made from a trash can and I appreciated the creativity that went into a skyscraper building complete with mirrored windows! It was fun oohing and ahhing over everyone's boxes and Sean loved passing out his valentines to all of them. He was thrilled to bring home candy of course and enjoyed looking through all the valentines he got. Can't wait for next Valentine's day!
-Valerie
(Linking up to Jen's Link Party Palooza over at Tatertots and Jello!)