Tape Resist Clown Fish

Thanks so much to Anna for having me over to share a guest post with you. My name is Nicola and I blog over at craftykidsathome.com where I share my ideas for toddler and collaborative arts, crafts and messy play projects for 2-7 year olds.

My kids are obsessed with all things under the sea and we are regular visitors to our local aquarium. The fish the kids are always keenest to seek out are the cute Clown Fish. They are probably some of the smallest fish in the aquarium, but their “Finding Nemo” fame means they shine out from all of the rest, well at least in the eyes or my children anyway. I must admit I am quite a big fan of the film as well, so I may have played a part in fuelling their obsession!

After coming back from a trip to the aquarium, the kids are always keen to embark on some fishy arts and crafts activities, so I’m always looking out for new ways to craft fish and other sea creatures. I bought a pad of large canvas sheets recently, so we decided to put this to good use and create some tape resist clown fish with it.

I cut out a few clown fish shapes from the canvas sheets and tore up some strips of masking tape. The kids then stuck these down over their fish, where they wanted the clown fishes white stripes to be. Next they painted over their fish with orange paint. Tape resist art is great, as it means they don’t have to worry about going over the lines with the paint. Anything that goes onto the tape, comes off with it at the end of the activity, leaving behind a nice neat white space behind it.

To create the lovely thin black stripes, which run down alongside the thick white stripes on a clown fish, the kids took a thin paintbrush and painted black lines down the edges of the masking tape. I did encourage them to be a bit more careful with this part of the activity.

Once the paint had dried we then removed the strips of masking tape to reveal the white stripes and added on googly eyes to finish off our fish. The canvas did curl up a little as the paint dried, but this was soon sorted out by placing a heavy book over it for a couple of hours.

Our fish then needed something to swim in, so the kids painted over a large sheet of white paper using blue paint. To create the sandy sea bed, we spread glue along the bottom of the picture and then sprinkled over wholemeal flour.

For more fishy inspired activities please pop over and check out our Bubble wrap Jellyfish and our Fine Motor Fishing activity 

You can also find Nicola on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.