I am already a wild fan of fish prints. A few years ago we vacationed on Cape Cod and happened upon this fab little shop called Blue Water Fish Rubbings. They sell clothes, bags, and prints that are made by pressing real fish and sea creatures that have been inked onto fabric or paper. We bought a shirt while we were there and I love it.

Fast forward to June Martha Stewart Living, where Martha has several pages devoted to making fish prints, shell prints and other beach imprints. Martha uses a rubber fish for hers, but this weekend we visited my parents at their lake house, so I was determined to use a real fish.

I went to a craft store and bought ink and rice paper. I had a little brush already. I took it with us. We caught a lot of fish, but since bass season has not started yet, we couldn’t keep those big fish. We did catch a lot of little sunfish though and we kept some to eat for lunch. One of the fish we set aside for the print.

First I dried the fish off and let it sit in the sun to get really dry. I painted the ink on it and pressed the rough side of the rice paper onto it (hoping that was the right side!). The first one wasn’t great and I quickly learned to use a very light coating of ink. The next few turned out really well. I am definitely going to frame one and hang it up at the lake.

I ended up with ink all over my hands, but it all washed off. And don’t worry, we did eat the fish after we washed it, so this project was not wasteful.

I want to try this again with a really big fish once they are in season and we can keep them, so I left all the supplies at the lake. I’m going to buy some other colors of ink so that I can do a multi-colored print as well.

This project was really very easy. If I can do it, you can do it! I would love to try it with some shells and maybe some seaweed.

I am already a wild fan of fish prints. A few years ago we vacationed on Cape Cod and happened upon this fab little shop called Blue Water Fish Rubbings. They sell clothes, bags, and prints that are made by pressing real fish and sea creatures that have been inked onto fabric or paper. We … Read more →