Time for some more Super Mario fun! Today I’m going to share how I created the Super Mario Cheep Cheeps (aka the adorable fish that swim around the water levels, but also kill you if you hit them). If you’ve been following along with my blog posts, last week I shared how to make the Boos and made a note about saving any of the paper lanterns that you messed up on for projects like this one.

Why I Created the Cheep Cheeps…

We already know that my husband and I are nerds and needed to have a Super Mario basement but we decided to take our basement and divide it into two sections: normal Super Mario land and a water level. The Super Mario land houses our couch, TV and workout area and the Super Mario Water level contains the bar and hopefully something more fun someday, but right now just the bar. So of course the first thing you need in the water level is a Cheep Cheep!

Where to Buy the Materials…

This is another super cheap and easy project. Last week I shared with you the 10″ paper lanterns I bought on Amazon for $10. For this project I used three paper lanterns, including one that I messed up on when creating the Boos. I bought some red shiny spray pint (I used Krylon Color Master Banner Red, photo below) and thick foam sheets from Michaels in yellow, white and a light pink or peach color. You will also need a black sharpie and hot glue.

Creating the Cheep Cheeps…

First things first, we had to spray paint the lanterns. This was the most difficult part of the project because it’s a freaking ball you need to spray without it rolling around. I had a giant spray painting craft day where I did a lot of the Mario projects and some wedding projects (hence the pumpkins) so I put a massive tarp in my backyard and laid everything out.

I taped the metal part of the paper lantern to the tarp and gave the lanterns two coats of paint. I let it dry for a little while and then flipped the ball over, and taped the other side to the tarp to finish the spray paint on the bottom section.

Side Note: While the lanterns are drying you might want to lift it gently by the metal part on the top every once in a while so it doesn’t get super stuck to the tarp. 

We got a surprise rainstorm while doing this project so my husband and I were frantically running out in the backyard and bringing what we could inside, but luckily everything survived! My neighbors probably think we are crazy but what can you do?

After the lanterns were dry, it was time to create the fish. I googled Super Mario Cheep Cheep coloring pages and looked for a single Cheep Cheep with easy to follow lines. I decided on this image as it gave me the items I needed to add to the fish that was easily traceable.

To get the correct size for my lantern, I copy and pasted the fish in a Word document and made a couple different sizes. I printed the fish, cut out the fins, eyes and lips and held them up to my lantern. I resized them on my Word doc as necessary and when they looked like an acceptable size, we were ready to go! I cut out the pieces I needed, placed them on the correct color of foam, traced the images and cut them out. (If you don’t want the lines showing from tracing the images, trace the images backwards on the foam board). For the eyes, since this picture has a side view and you don’t get the full eyes I cut out the large part of the eye and traced it twice to get the same size on each side. For the stomach, I literally just cut a circle in the size I thought would fit. I had to cut a couple of slits in the circle so it would lay flatter on the paper lantern, but because of the nature of the lantern it’s not going to lay perfectly, as you will see in the final pictures.

After cutting out each piece, I looked at the photo above and drew the lines on the fins, eyes and mouth. For the mouth I had some issues doing it free hand so i just cut out the center of the mouth and traced it. That’s it! You have just created a Cheep Cheep. We hung it up on the basement rafters with some fishing wire and now we have a row of Cheep Cheeps above our bar. Stay tuned for our next project, the Super Mario Sea Urchins!