Our first weekend, we had a marvelous time making this cute cardboard box aquarium!
For her birthday, Princess Pea had of course received all kinds of lovely gifts, and many toys seem to come in boxes with clear plastic windows in the front, to display the toys. This box was from a jewellry box, and we thought it would be great for making .... a tv, another theatre, a shadow box, a shop window, or ... an aquarium!
It was really easy to do, but required a couple of sessions to allow for glitter glue drying time.
We decorated the front with some yellow corrugated paper, pipe cleaners, and a picture of a mermaid (also recovered from a tag on a gift). We also glued some blue tissue paper to the inside back wall of the box, and some more yellow corrugated paper on the bottom inside. I mostly did this part to get the pieces stuck on in the right places. We decided not to bother covering the whole box, as Princess Pea rather liked the pinky-purple colour of the box itself.
Then we cut some simple fish shapes out of craft foam (I drew the shapes and she cut them out), and decorated them with glitter glue on both sides. Cutting the foam was surprisingly easy for her. This was Princess Pea's favourite part, as glitter glue is her art supply of choice these days. We also had some pre-cut foam stars, so we used them to make jellyfish by glueing on googly eyes and some bits of embroidery thread dangling underneath.
We used embroidery thread and children's plastic needles to string up the fish and jellyfish, and tape the ends of the threads to the inside of the box lid. I showed her how to thread the needle and push it through the foam by doing the first one for her, then she did some on her own. The foam was quite easy to push the needle through.
And finally, she finished it off with some ocean-themed stickers we had on hand.
This was such a fun project to do together, and was made entirely of odds and ends from around the house!
I think it turned out great!
(And much easier to take care of than a real fish tank!)
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