Soap Bottle Fish

11Getting Started

Always use your imagination and be creative when building these kids crafts or any others. It's your creation, so be inventive when looking for building supplies — you just may be surprised! When building your project, experiment with new and different ways of putting it together. The most important thing is to have fun!

1Find these or similar supplies!

• 1 plastic container
• Old box or some cardboard
• Tape for customizing
• Colored pens or paint

21. Cover your container!

I started out by covering my plastic container with tape. This is a good idea if you plan on dressing your fish up later.

32. Cut out your fins!

Next I cut out my fins, flippers and tail from an old box. You could play around with different designs, cutting them out and holding them up to your fish body before deciding on a design you like best. When you have a design you like, go ahead and tape it in place on the body of your fish like you see here.

3. Be creative with the fins!

I spent a lot of time on my fins, flippers and tail before I attached them to my fish body. After settling on a design, I carefully twisted pieces of tape into rope strands. I then taped each strand into place on the fins and tails, creating a ribbed-like design. As always, we hope you will experiment and try new techniques.

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4. Tape up your fish!

I covered my entire fish body with a billion pieces of masking tape that I carefully ripped by hand into small scales, overlapping each one on top off the previous one. This created the incredible scale look you see here. Be warned... it took forever! (You don't actually have to use a billion.)

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5. Make the mouth!

For the mouth, I wadded up tape, shaping it into the basic mouth look that I liked. When you use a lot of masking tape, you can mold it like clay, and you can form a mouth. Then I carefully taped it into place. This took a few layers to get the lips looking fairly smooth and realistic. Maybe you could try something else?

6small6.Make the eyes!

I taped two water bottle caps for eye bases. I wrapped tape, rolled up into long pieces, around the base of the eyes to create a sloped ridge, and I then taped over the eyes.

7small7. Color your fish!

Now it gets really fun. You can color your fish any way you like. Recently I was given some colored permanent markers. They are really cool,and they look great. I was able to mix the different colors together and with some trial and error, VOILÀ! — a crazy soap bottle fish! Don't let him swim away...

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118. Add the eyes!

Your fish will need some eyes. For my eyes, I cut two small cardboard circles out, covered them with tape, colored them, and attached them onto my eye bases. Then I cut out two more pieces (even smaller than before), colored them black, and attached them on top giving my fish some fish eyeballs.

 

Have fun with your soap bottle fish!
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