Here Fishy, Fishy!

Here's another toilet paper craft to join our cardboard paper menagerie: freshly caught fish! 

Based on these little fellows who are touring the internet, this version is simpler in that it needs less materials and there is less cutting and glueing involved.

I toyed with the idea of a tutorial for you but these little fish are so simple to make I decided that maybe instructions were more fitting. So I'll just explain how these were made -for the absolute beginners out there.

First draw your fish in pencil on the cardboard tube. 

I start with the line that seperates the body from the head. 

Then I draw two large eyes on opposite sides of the tube. 

I continue by drawing the scales on the body. (It's really up to you what kind of shape you want the scales to be and how they will be repeated over the body of the fish.I really don't think you can go wrong here. Even coloured doodles by a younger child would look great  as scales.)

Then it's time to decide on the colours for the fish and where each will go. (You can see a previous fish in red-orange hues here.)

You can paint them or draw them in a number of ways. You could easily use pencils, markers or paint. 

These are coloured in with coloured markers and then outlined with a black marker.

For the tail, all you need is something that is long and flow-ey. I used colour co-ordinated ribbon on these but I've also used newspaper strips and ribbons cut out of a plastic bag on other occassions.

Use what you have that you feel fits your fish and glue the strips under the cardboard tube so that the glued ends are not visible on the outside.

Your fish is now ready to be strung! 

Make two holes on the head of the fish. I estimate the centre between the eyes, poke a hole with a sharp pencil and then poke another hole exactly opposite the first one.

Find some string -or ribbon- and thread it through the holes, tie it up and your fish is strung!

Congratulations! You've done it!

I turned them into a summer mobile and hung them somewhere the breeze can make the tails flutter and float...

For other kids craft made out of tp tubes (ie toilet paper rolls) you can see a menagerie of animals here and some cheeky toy frogs here.

Linked to:

Annemarie's Haakblog, The Dedicated House, The Silly Pearl, Homework, Confessions Of A Serial DIYer