How to Make Ornamental Fish From Recycled Soda Bottles
If you are looking for a fun craft project for kids and grown-ups to do together that involves recycling some common household items, consider transforming some old plastic soda bottles into decorative fish ornaments. You can use soda bottles of all sizes to make different fish, then hang them from string as decorations either indoors or outdoors. Some elements of this project require adult help or supervision, but other parts can be left to children to complete themselves.
Things You'll Need
- Soda bottles
- Marker pen
- Craft knife
- Stapler
- Hot glue gun
- White glue
- Tissue paper scraps
- Googly eyes
Instructions
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1
Cut the top and bottom off the bottle with a craft knife. Cut the bottom off just above the base, and the top just below the screw-top part. The top of the bottle will form the fish's mouth, and the bottom will become its tail.
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2
Use the base of your palm to press the sides of the bottle together in the middle -- the part of the bottle that used to have a label around it. Place two or three staples through this flattened middle section to hold it together.
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3
Use a marker pen to draw the shape of a fish's tail at the bottom end of the bottle. Connect the narrowest part of the triangular tail (near the middle of the bottle) to the top and bottom of the bottle with curved lines to make the shape of the fish's body. Trace the marker lines on the opposite side of the bottle too.
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4
Cut along your marked lines with a craft knife, but do not entirely remove the excess plastic pieces from the bottle. Instead, leave them connected at the top-center and bottom-center of the bottle, bending them back away from the "body" and "tail" of the fish a little to resemble fins.
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5
Turn the plastic bottle over to the children to decorate it with torn strips of tissue paper and white glue. They need to paint white glue onto the bottle, stick down strips of paper and continue by overlapping the strips until the entire bottle is covered. You can use orange tissue paper to make a goldfish, or use many different colors for a tropical look.
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6
Hot glue googly eyes to the sides of the fish's face.
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Tips & Warnings
Wash the soda bottles with hot soapy water and allow them to dry thoroughly before beginning this project.
Older children could cut out semi-circular "scale" shapes of tissue paper to cover the fish with for a more realistic pattern.
Decorate the bottle-fish with spray paint as an alternative to tissue paper.
Tell children to take care when handling the cut edges of the plastic bottle as they can be sharp.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit water bottle image by Radu Razvan from Fotolia.com
