Puffy Paint Starfishes!

We have been working hard on our ocean animals all week. Here are just some of the ones we have made already. We used some new painting techniques on some of our animals this week too. I love how our ocean is coming out and can’t wait to show you are finished product. It’s going to look great in our playroom all summer.

You can’t have an ocean without starfish. These were fun to make and I even got into the messy fun with Belle. I printed a cartoonish looking starfish template and traced it onto a piece of large paper. To give our starfish a fun texture we used puffy paint. I mixed shaving cream with purple paint (Belle’s choice) and we finger painted it onto our starfish. Belle started with a paintbrush but it was going on to smooth for what I wanted it to look like. I went over a couple of them to give the smoother ones a more textured look. When they were dry I cut them out and we added eyes to some of them and left the other’s just as they were. I love how these came out.

Our starfish still wet.

 

 

Next up was some jellyfish. I wanted to make jellyfish that we could hang up in our ocean. Most art activities for jellyfish that I was finding would be impossible to hang up in our ocean. So I decided to do the water coffee filters again. Belle loves it so it was a good choice. Belle spent forever coloring her jellyfish. Once done we took them outside and spayed them with water. Belle sprayed them a lot and it was evening so not much sun left in our driveway. They took a while to dry. We had to bring them inside. Once dry I cut them in half with a scalloped edge. Then we taped on some crepe paper for their tentacles.

 

 

You also can’t forget about a 150 year old sea turtle in your ocean. I drew a sea turtle out onto white construction paper. Drawing the body and shell separately. I also cut them apart for painting as well. Belle then painted the turtle’s body green and the shell brown. When dry I cut the pieces out and we glued on some torn green construction paper to the shell to give it that spotty look. We then glued the shell onto the body and added an eye and a mouth. He’s a great addition the sandy bottom of our ocean.

 

 

Finally we had to make at least one fish to go in the ocean (don’t worry we have more coming up too). I drew a fish shape onto white construction paper. To paint it we used a new technique I have been wanting to do for a while but didn’t have any bubble wrap. I took a toilet paper tube and taped on a small piece of bubble wrap to one end. We then used green, blue, and purple paint for our fish. Belle dipped the bubble wrap into the paint and used it as a stamper on her fish. It left a pretty cool scaly effect on our fish. Once dry I cut it out and Belle added an eye and mouth to her fish.

 

 

 

Our ocean is coming together. We still have a couple more animal friends to finish up and add to our ocean. Good thing this was out last week of a themed week until July. For the next couple weeks we just have some easy fun activities planned to keep us busy while waiting for baby sister to make her appearance. So we have plenty of time next week to finish up our ocean friends. And to finish our ocean!