Colorful Water Bottle Fish Craft

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Recyclables are a cheap and wonderful crafting material, and water bottle crafts are one of our favorites when it comes to getting creative.

This recycled craft uses both recycled water bottles and tissue paper left over from birthday gifts to create colorful, one of a kind, water bottle fish.

 

recycled water bottle craft -- make a fish from a water bottle

This fun sea animal craft is a great way to use those old water bottles for art.  

If you love water bottle crafts as much as we do, then you need to check out these beautiful Water Bottle Suncatchers.

Water Bottle Fish Craft

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Materials Needed:

 

To begin crafting your fish, have the kids rip up squares of brightly colored tissue paper.   This is a great activity for building hand strength for later writing skills!

The squares are great for giving the fish a multi-colored collage look.  You can also cut 1 inch thick strips of tissue paper, which are great if you want a striped fish instead.

Once the tissue paper is ready, have your child use an old paint brush to paint white craft glue on the outside of their water bottle.

It helps to only use a little glue at a time, adding pieces of tissue paper as you go, instead of covering the whole bottle with glue at once.  Also, you may want to have a damp paper towel handy for wiping excess glue off so the tissue paper doesn’t keep getting stuck to little fingers.

 

kids fish craft

 

Once the water bottle is covered in tissue paper,  let the whole thing dry.  It took ours about one hour.  While you’re waiting, check out this fun sea animals game.  

Use craft foam to create your fish’s fins.  For younger children you may want to cut out the pieces yourself.  For older children, you could draw the design on the craft foam and have them cut it out, or let them design the fins completely on their own.

Use a hot glue gun to add wiggly eyes and the craft foam fins and tail to your fish.  Please remember, hot glue can get extremely hot!  This is a step best suited for an adult to do.  Young children can easily point out where each piece should go while the adult works the hot glue gun.

The best part of using hot glue is that your one of a kind creation will be ready to play with, or display, as soon as the glue cools.

kids water bottle craft

preschooler water bottle craft

 

These brightly colored water bottle fish look beautiful hanging from the ceiling or in a window.  

 

water bottle fish craft using a recycled bottle

 

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This post was originally published August 10, 2012.  

Comments

  3. What a great way to up cycle plastic bottles. It looks like your kids had fun making them!

    • We usually use the same bottles over and over, just refilling them from the sink. But at some point they start to look like they need dumping; we had fun creating something new from them!

  5. What a cute idea! Thanks for sharing; I’ve pinned this to bust out with my little one sometime. 🙂

  6. Oh my goodness! That is the cutest project for kids. I always have tons of water bottles in recycling. I am going to have to do this with my daughter!

    (PS~Found you on Blog Frog! Look forward to more!)

    Katie

    • Glad to help you find a way to put some of those water bottles to use before they go for recycling! Hope you enjoy it with your little one as much as we did!

      Can’t wait to check out your blog!

    • Glad to help you find a way to put some of those water bottles to use before they go for recycling! Hope you enjoy it with your little one as much as we did!

      Can’t wait to check out your blog!

    • Glad to help you find a use for those bottles before they go to recycling! Hope you guys have as much fun making them as we did!

      Love BlogFrog! Can’t wait to check you out!

    • I hope your girls enjoy it as much as my little ones did! We still have ours hanging from the ceiling in the play area. And… if you have glow sticks, stick one in each fish and turn out the lights — pretty cool for a slumber party in the play area!

      Can’t wait to hop over and read your post!

    • Thank you! The cardboard play area was a simple solution to keeping the kids in an approved area. I never knew it would work so well… We’ve had it up for over 2 years now.

  17. I love your fishy bottles. Such an easy and doable project. I have used craft glue for foam and ended up not liking it. When a new glue is on sale, I buy it and test it. Don’t have a favorite glue, yet. Enjoy your SITS Day.

    • So far I haven’t found a glue I really like for craft foam — my kids want their projects “now” so regular glue takes too long to dry for them. LOL
      Thanks for all the comments today! Off to check out your blog!

  18. What a fun craft. I bet you could use this craft to make Rainbow Fish. Do you know that book? Just a few aluminum foil scales. Happy SITS day. I blog about raising girls, mine are a bit older, but you still might find the posts helpful–if you have time (and you might not after all these SITS day comments)–you should stop by check it out.

    • I haven’t read that book — we will have to look for it at the library this week.

      LOL — yes, it has definitely been a busy day keeping up with comments and still playing with the kids, but I am off to check out your blog! I love the title of it!

    • Yes, I think it would be a great VBS craft! I’m sure people would have tons of water bottles to donate, too!
      Thanks for stopping in on my SITS day — off to read your blog!

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