The Doves’ first foray into the world of arts & crafts is creating fabulous Tissue Paper Jellyfish. It will be a challenge. I broke my wrist at the point of rotation a year ago. Despite inheriting some impressive afro comb like metalwork, it’s not in good shape. So our arts & crafts journey begins with me owning a wrist that quite frankly belongs to a 102-year-old. POD is just great but she’s just turned two and she’s a climber. She doesn’t do sitting still well unless she’s eating or watching Peppa Pig.
Our quest to make Tissue Paper Jellyfish started well. We painted some A4 card with thick layers of blue paint so all the brush marks showed. It was hugely convenient we didn’t need to let the paint dry before adding another layer. Time is of the essence when you’re keeping a toddler entertained.
We then put the card to one side so we could create the jellyfish. Making a simply jellyfish is a straightforward process as you just cut a domed shape for the body. Each of your jellyfish shapes should then be glued onto another piece of paper. I would presume this is to ensure the paint doesn’t seep through your tissue paper jellyfish shapes when they’re stuck on the wet painted card.
We omitted the process of sticking the tissue paper to another piece of paper because at that point POD decided to do her human fan impression. She whirled splayed arms across the table at high speed sending our tissue paper shapes off the table like birds in flight. Unfortunately she also managed to ‘blow’ a full cup of tepid coffee everywhere.
If you’ve ever wondered how much liquid a cup of coffee can hold, it’s about 842 litres. We said goodbye to the beautifully crafted body shapes we’d created as we scooped up the soggy remains. Thirty minutes later we were back on track following a brief entertainment break.
We cut out some more tissue paper jellyfish shapes (in our haste forgetting to attach them to paper) then stuck them to our snazzy blue painted card. We glued a darker piece of tissue paper, shaped like a leaf, to these for the underside of the jellyfish.
We also made spotted jellyfish by gluing some tissue paper spots onto the jellyfish’s body and painting on spots. And we created a double body jellyfish by cutting two different body shapes and gluing them together. Although striped jellyfish could be created by cutting curved stripes from tissue paper and gluing them onto the body, we lost a true work of art in the coffee tsunami. We decided to paint our tentacles white although you can draw them too.
Our fish would have been amazing if we had chocolate wrappers or shiny wrapping paper but we didn’t. So we improvised using green tissue paper instead. It’s fair to say you will never see a fish that looks like the ones we created.
So here we are. The Doves initial dabble into the world of arts & crafts.
Tissue paper jellyfish was taken from the book ‘365 things to do with paper and cardboard’ by Usborne Activities.
