tp roll fish tank

my little blonde curls has developed a major fish obsession.   he has been coloring and cutting out pictures and taping them to the wall for a "fish tank" for quite some time.    we have a fish tank, but he has octopi and eels and whales in his paper tank . . . i guess he has a paper ocean on the wall, not a tank.   the other day, i was looking at the many tp rolls that accumulate and thought, "hmmm . . fish in 3d".   i flattened the tp rolls so they had a crease on the top and bottom, cut basic fish shapes and he painted, and i painted, and we made a large selection of tp roll fish.   they sat on my window sill for a couple weeks while school was starting and there was just too much chaos for finding tp roll fish homes.   this week, i decided it was time.

 TA-DA!   tp roll fish tank!

ok, it's a mobile, but you know.   it's fun.

we painted some strips of cardboard for the water and taped them to some wire bent into circles.   two strings crossing for the top suspension of the thing.   same basic principle for the bottom layer of water but longer strings and attached at the same top point so they both turn freely.     i used a large blunt needle to pull string between the cardboard and wire in the water sections.   i went with the easiest attachment, just pulling the string under the top crease in the fish.   you could get fancy and cut fins that stick out, tape the front together etc.   the fanciest i got was one fish he wanted "big".   i used two tp rolls glued together with a third in the middle to stabilize them.    i had some funky cut "sharks" too.   he wanted them to have open mouths.   i thought they looked like nothing but he was happy and that is all that counts.    i had to stick the needle though those, there just wasn't enough top crease to support them hanging.

next time, we are going to cut turtles out of the tp rolls and make coral for them to swim in.   since halloween is coming, we should really make some bats again.   those are fun too.   but that's another post.