Spare Surf Fin Art

Fins can sometimes act like socks in the wash. One will disappear for no reason, and you don't know where it went. Mind you, my pricier fins I keep better tabs on, but those plastic ones that come with the board tend to get switched out, then lost in the shuffle.
Here's one I've had on my side bite fin rack for a while, just hanging out by it's lonesome. It's a plastic FCS left side large side bite that has been well surfed, from the look of the edges on it.

Since it has a flat back, I thought this could make a cool art project.
I just got finished flipping through my Surfer magazine (I wish this was in digital format!), so I've been wanting to do several projects with the magazine once I was finished with it.

Latest (relatively) Surfer mag

I have a Plexiglas square template, so I used it to cut some squares from pictures that I liked in the magazine, really looking for colors I liked that reminded me of the waves.

Next, I spread I good layer of white, clear drying glue over the curved, outer part of the fin, leaving the flat side plain. I didn't cover the tabs on the fin:

I used Tacky Glue- hopefully that's not how it'll turn out.

Next, I took the pieces and laid them out in the pattern I wanted. This is where you can get really creative. To make sure the pieces laid flat, I carefully put a thin layer of glue over all the pieces once they were in place to ensure I didn't have corners sticking up. I then used my exacto knife to cut around the shape on a cutting mat.

 

I even took some of the scraps and made an overlapped edging around the fin to neaten it up a bit, and added some strips of paper to make stripes.
After that, I took the fin out to the garage, and WITH MY MASK ON, a sprayed 3 coats of sealant over the whole fin to protect the piece. Make sure you do light coats, and wait 15-20 between each coat.
I got a "memory box" frame from the craft store, which is essentially a frame that has a thick empty space inside to mount objects that have some dimension to them. The one I got is an 8 by 8. It was cheap, even new, and a lot of times, these can be easily picked up at Goodwill or a garage sale, but I didn't get the chance to treasure hunt for frames recently.

Memory box next to dried, sealed fin.

I mounted the fin to the back of the frame with foam tape so it stuck out a bit from the backing, and could be removed and remounted on something else if I wanted.

Had an extra mounting strip around, so I used that.

I centered the fin up on the backing, mounted it, signed the bottom with my initials, and hung it. DONE!
It can stand on it's own on a shelf, or be hung up, either way:

Hanging up on the wall

This is a good use for your favorite old magazine photos, or photos of yourself that would be more interesting to mount on a used fin than just in a plain boring picture frame. D'art of surfing.....