This week we made a Jesus fish craft using only cardboard tubes, glue, and glitter. The kids had so much fun with this one!
This was such a simple process. Take a cardboard tube (such as a toilet paper roll or a paper towel tube) and flatten it. Then cut it into strips. You’ll end up with football shaped rings. Cut the ring apart at one fold, cut 2 slits, and fit it together in the shape of Jesus fish.
Once you have your basic Jesus fish shape, you can craft it however you want. It would be fun to just paint them, but we decided to glitter ours. To do this, put some white glue in a cup and add a little water. (About 1 part glue to 1 part water). You can paint the glue onto the Jesus fish using an old paintbrush.
Once it’s all covered in glue, it’s time to add the glitter! We placed our Jesus fish on a piece of paper and shook the glitter over the top of the fish.
Once there’s a lot of glitter on the paper, you can pinch it and sprinkle more over with your fingers. What a fun, crafty mess!
Keep rolling, pinching, and shaking the glitter on until the whole fish is covered.
Set them on another piece of paper and wait for the glue to dry.
We found that darker, more saturated, colors of glitter looked nicer than pastel glitters.
Check out some of our finished Jesus fish! We made a whole glitter rainbow of them!
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These were so much fun to make and my children were so pleased with the results! I love crafts that allow children to succeed, and there’s really no way to mess these up. When kids are successful in their crafts, it builds artistic confidence.
I was trying to decide exactly what to do with these new creations and thought they would make a cute Jesus fish mobile.
To make your own mobile, just cut a strip from card stock and staple it into a loop. Then punch some holes for hanging.
We used embroidery floss that matched the colors of our fish to hang them. Just tie the string around the fish- the glitter grips the string and holds it in place. Hang them from the holes in your card stock at different heights.
You’ll need to punch 3 holes in the top as well and suspend it from more string so you can hang it up.
These would be a great craft to make for Vacation Bible School, CCD, Sunday School, or at home. Keep your eyes peeled for glitter at Dollar Tree- it’s so cheap there and I often find a great variety of colors! Happy crafting! 🙂
I also have a fun round-up of fish crafts for kids here that include ideas for all age groups, so check that out!
Related Posts:
- Jesus Fish Chalk Craft– Fun for Kids of all ages!
- Round-up of Jesus Fish Crafts
- Fishers of Men Crafts, Activities, and More
- “Toss Your Nets to the Other Side” Craft
- “Toss Your Nets to the Other Side” Fun Food Idea
You’re such a good momma! I have a strict no glitter rule in all crafting projects…simply too much mess to clean up. They would look okay painted, but yours with the glitter look fabulous!
Do you not own a vacuum? 😉 I actually don’t mind glitter mess because it’s so harmless. It doesn’t stain anything, it’s not sticky, and it sweeps or wipes right up. But I know there’s a lot of moms that think like you.
Oh my goodness this is so cute!! I love this!
Thanks, Maureen! They were a lot of fun to make, too!
This is fantastic! Plus, we’ve been working on an Epiphany mobile, but I wasn’t quite sure how we were going to hang it, until now. Thank you for the wonderful ideas.
That sounds really cool! I could totally see an Epiphany mobile with 3 kings hanging down and a big star at the top! Ooh- or the 3 gifts!
Ohh! We will have to add a star to the top of our mobile! Thanks for the idea!
These are so lovely!!!!! Easy to do even for little ones. 🙂
I’m thinking first Friday in Lent make 7 of these (one for each Friday). Read the one of the seven penitential Psalms at Friday dinner and then hang the reading under the fish until all are completed on Good Friday. Now if I can remember this when Lent rolls around…
Wow! I’m loving these suggestions! I was trying to think of a cool use for these after we made them and my brain settled on the mobile. Someone on facebook recommended spraying them with lacquer to hold the glitter on and making them into key-chains.
I love your blog. I am a religion teacher to 4, 5, & 6 yr. olds and easily could make your crafts.
So glad you’re finding my site useful, Debbie! 🙂
We are definitely going to have make this! We made the Epiphany stars listed on another post out of a paper towel tube and they turned out beautifully! As a bonus, our daughters’ room is a sea animal theme, so the Jesus fish will feel right at home!
Very cool! I love cardboard tube crafts!
I agree those are so cute. I’ve heard you can spray hair spray on it and that will cut down on the glitter loss afterwards.
Very cool idea!
That’s interesting! I knew you could spray hair spray (or special expensive craft store sprays) to chalk drawings or pencil drawings to fix things. I used to spray my conte pinctures from college with shellac. I’ve never heard of that for glitter, but it makes since!
What a fun idea! I’m another mom not brave enough for glitter, but they sure look like fun! I do think I’ll undertake your Lenten eggs this year though, I save a big 18 egg crate for it. 🙂
Ok, that’s it! I’m officially going to write a post soon about why children should be allowed to use glitter! 🙂
Our pastor call glitter “devils dandruff” it makes me laugh!
Love it , Love it, Love it! And I’m sure my son will love it too 🙂
Thank you for the wonderful idea !
Another craft that made me smile. And Lacy, I never mind the stray glitter . . . it’s just a bit of happy to mix in with your life. 🙂
So happy to find someone who feels the same way!
That is so cute Lacy. I love that you then make it into a mobile!
thanks for this idea. I will be using this for our craft in Sunday School this coming week. We will be talking about icthus, and the meaning behind the fish symbol.
I just picked up some extra glitter at the $Tree just to be sure I had enough for this craft! I love that the childrens bulletin from last week was about fishers of men and now we can do this craft to bring it home!
I love this idea. The glitter makes them look so pretty.
Dear Lacy,
Loved this and completed ours the other day with the help of my daughter. I have some pointers to help keep the glitter for this project contained a little. You can put the glitter in plastic baggies, place the fish in gently so that the glue doesn’t touch the sides as much as possible and genlty shake the bag to cover with glitter. You can probably carefully put unused glitter back into the container from which it came, or you can leave it in the baggie for the next project. It worked out pretty well and the glitter mess was minimal. Of course this won’t work with every glitter project, but did well for this one! We also used an embroidery hoop to hang our fish from.
This is such a great idea! Right on! 🙂
I am a pre-k teacher who is always looking for something new. This is it, thanks! (I love when we find glitter or other small craft fragments later…..it reminds us of our craft creation from when we made that mess).
What a great way to look at it! 🙂
Very cute idea!!!!!
I would love to share this idea with our Vacation Bible School Coordinator and the teachers at my boys Catholic School.
I was stopping by with congratulations on making it to the top 5 most popular posts on Fun Family Crafts for June! However, I have to apologize first. :-/ It seems that we were linked to another site that is carrying your tutorial in full and we did not realize it until just now. So I apologize that all the traffic was sent theirs initially!
Thanks for fixing that. I’ve contacted that other site. So annoying! Thanks for the heads up. 🙂
hi! just wanted to say how much i love your website, and all the children at my liturgy group in durham city, england love all your activities! keep it up 🙂
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We are going to attempt this craft this Sunday for CCD 🙂 Thanks for the great ideas!!
Thank you for posting. I am making agape for Emmaus and this will be great. I like glitter…. it is very easy to clean up. Use a paper plate to do the glitter on, and news paper. normally that is all it takes to keep it contained.
Lacy, brilliant. It looks easy enough. We are studying the Christians in the Catacombs and was looking for a craft to incorporate the “fish” symbol and came across this craft…. It’s perfect! Thanks so much for sharing your ideas with us!