Giant Seahorse

I pondered over what I was going to do and as I looked over my environment for inspiration, and I came across a seahorse. As I looked at the seahorse I looked at the delicacy and how it should be protected. Something so small trying to survive in a big sea. I decided to make this seahorse just a bit bigger from a small seahorse to a big bad seahorse.

First you want to find a good picture off of the internet. Then you want to make a grid on the image so you can have even parts of the picture to outline onto your cardboard. I activated the grid by acting like I want to crop the image while taking a screenshot of your grid like image. You want to proceed to crop your image with the grid and end up with 9 separate pictures.

You want to print out your images and line them up and glue them to each other. Then lay out your paper to the cardboard.

You should now have your cut out paper of the seahorse onto the cardboard. The paper now serves as a template for your seahorse so the cardboard can be cut out. Once the cardboard has been cut you can add another layer to your cardboard so the seahorse is stable and strong.

You should now have two layers of cardboard the same size you can hot glue them together. Once this step is done you want to have a sort of stair type of thing of your seahorse to give it texture. Repeat this step on both sides of the seahorse

You should now have a cardboard seahorse now it is time to make the mixture for the paper Mache. You should have your liquid glue, water, and salt. You can mix these items together and put your newspaper in the mixture. When you take out the newspaper you want to take off the excess glue and apply it to the cardboard seahorse.

I studied the texture of the seahorse and decided to crumble the newspaper after it comes out of the paper mache mixture. I applied a layer of newspaper and put a layer of the crumpled up paper mache I then made another layer of texture and placed the paper mache over it. I let the paper mache dry for 24 to 48 hours. After a day or two you can apply the paper mache to the other side of the cardboard (try to make it as symmetrical as you can).

I now put on 2 coats of white spray paint and waited 30 minutes to 1 hour in between applying coats. I now applied an orange coat of spray paint and across the seahorse in diagonal directions along the seahorse. I also put on the yellow spray paint to give it more color and also with sprits on black spray paint to give it more of a seahorse look. I let it dry and put on the circle of white paint, black eyes, and a black smile with regular spray paint. You should now be finished with your seahorse, I am not a painter so it does not look like best.