Bubble Wrap Squid

How to Make

1. As a cutting guide on the large plastic bottle, draw a line around the bottle about a third of the way down from the top using a fine tip glass pen. Cut along this line with scissors or a craft knife. Recycle the bottom part of the plastic bottle.
2. Keep the top of the bottle to use as the squid’s head. Cover over the cut edge with masking tape to protect from any sharp edges.
3. Mix red and white deco acrylic paint together to make pink. Paint the pink paint onto the top of the bottle and on top of the masking tape. Leave to dry.
4. Cut 8 strips of bubble wrap, roughly 20cm long and 2-3cm wide. Paint the strips bubble side up using pink deco acrylic paint. These will be the squid’s 8 arms that are covered in suckers.
5. Cut 2 strips of red tissue paper roughly 20cm long and 2-3cm wide. These will be the squid’s tentacles.
6. Draw 2 shapes that look like a leaf shape onto a sheet of pink foam. Cut the 2 leaf shapes out and draw circles on one side of both of the shapes using a red pen to draw the suckers. These will be the clubs at the end of the tentacles that the squid uses to catch its prey!
7. Glue one of the pink foam shapes onto the bottom of one of the strips of red tissue paper. Leave to dry. Repeat with the other shape on the other strip of red tissue paper. Leave to dry.
8. Attach the tops of the 8 bubble wrap arms around the rim of the bottle using the super tacky multi-purpose glue. Leave to dry.
9. Using the super tacky glue, attach the 2 tissue paper tentacles to the rim of the bottle with the pink foam clubs hanging at the bottom. Leave to dry.
10. Cut out 2 large circles from light green foam for the eyes of the squid.
11. Next, cut out 2 slightly smaller circles from black foam for the pupil of the eyes and stick them into the middle of the green circles using a glue stick.
12. Lastly, cut out 2 small circles from white foam for the highlight on the big squid eyes. Stick these onto the black foam circles using a glue stick. Stick the completed eyes onto the squid’s head using a glue stick.
13. Cut a piece of pink elastic roughly 20cm long. Fold this in half and tie in a double knot to make a loop and tape it to the top of the bottle using clear sticky tape.

Top Tip

Instead of pink elastic you can use any kind of string/cord/ribbon. Ensure the cut edges of the plastic bottle are always protected with masking tape before handing to a child to paint. To create the big green eyes, you could use the middle of the masking tape roll as a circular template.