Achoo! Funnies for Sneezes

I like the large, rectangular tissue boxes. They obviously last a lot longer then the smaller, square ones and, because of the weight, when you pull out a tissue, you don't lift up the whole box, which is what sometimes happens with the smaller boxes.

Step 1: Theme

The one trade-off is box design cuteness. The offerings go way down
compared to the plethora of designs on the smaller boxes. Since I've been on a Mod Podge comics kick lately, I thought, "Hey, why not!?"

I bought a bunch of comics for fifty cents each for putting together some future projects. If you have good ones, just scan 'em and print. Works just about the same as far as the gluing is concerned. Plus, that way you can have both sides of the comic pages.

I wasn't too inspired by what I had. A lot of the nicer artwork ones were kind of morbid or overtly sexpot-ish, or the pictures were too large. I was reading through the Funnies and the Lio strip had one about sneezing.

"Oh, I wonder if I do a search...."

We all know where that goes. I actually found a site that compiled about 8 pages worth of comic strips exclusively concerned with sneezing. Perfect! I just scrolled through ones that I liked and printed them out. I had to press ctrl + P because if I hovered over the image to save it, I got the stupid "no copyright" circle. When are those dinosaurs going to fade away? I still had a muted watermark in the center of the printouts, but it's barely noticeable if there's a good bit of coloring in that area.

Step 2: Logistics

Making a box to fit over the kleenex box isn't necessary. I pulled one out to compare the size difference of the box to the tissues. You'd think it would be a close fit, but no, there's lots of wiggle room!

I opened up one side to and stuck two pieces of hook/eye loop pads onto the flaps to allow for easy closure. When the tissue box runs out of tissues, just open up a new one from the side, pull the stack out and transfer back into the kleenex box you made. Easy!!

Step 3: Start Gluing!

Arrange your pictures the way you want them, or at least get a good idea of what the possibilities are. I discovered that I still needed more so found two additional comics from that site and printed those out.

Now onto the glue. Foam brushes are great for this first step. Completely coat the back of your piece with a thin layer of mod podge paper glue. Best to do this over a junk work surface/scrap paper. It will start to roll almost immediately, so just be aware of that. It is certainly okay to get glue on the good side, so you don't need to be too neat about this.

Step 4: Fill in Gaps and Finish Off

I filled in the gaps with a charcoal black acrylic paint. It framed everything off nicely. I suppose if you were just doing pictures, and not comic strips, you could do lots of cool overlapping and not have any background to deal with. That wasn't really an option with the format I used.

After the initial mod podge application and painting, I waited a few hours. I then put a coat of mod podge on top of that. Just one coat. The foam brush I used, even though it was new, kinda developed a bunch of ridges along the edge, so I didn't end up with the nicest finish. The third pic is right after I painted it. After an hour it looked much better. Up close or in a glare of the light you can see lines from the glue. I'll make another one and experiment with some bristle brushes. Careful not to touch while it's gluing or you'll get fingerprints. Otherwise, it's pretty cool looking! Certainly a fun project for kids, as it was pretty easy and just took a small amount of time.