Simple Button Fish Craft for Kids

Have a variety of spare craft buttons laying around in your craft supplies? Here’s a fun way for you and your kids to turn them into a simple button fish craft. 

I don’t know what it is about fish crafts, but I’m obsessed. I’ve had a big jar of colorful craft buttons in different sizes sitting in our craft supply closet for a while now. I looked at them the other day and was sparked with the idea to use them to create this colorful button fish craft for kids.

The buttons add a perfect texture to the fish craft since they pop off the page and the little hole reinforcer bubbles are perfect for kids who love to play with stickers…because what kid doesn’t like to play with stickers, right?!

[This fish craft was originally published on May 18, 2016. It has been updated with a new video tutorial, additional instructional text and photos.] 

How to Make a Button Fish Craft for Kids

This fun and colorful fish craft is perfect as a summer kids craft. As a bonus, there are so many great books you use to go along with this craft. Find a list of some of our favorites near the bottom of this post.

Read our easy step-by-step instructions below for how to make your own fish from buttons. We also have a video tutorial video inside this post you might find useful.

Supplies Needed for this Fish Craft for Kids

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• buttons (different sizes and colors)
• blue cardstock paper
• colored cardstock paper
• paper lunch sack (or light brown cardstock)
• green tissue paper
• white hole reinforcement labels
• small googly eyes (We love these adhesive googly eyes we received from our friends at OrientalTrading.com. All opinions expressed are my own.)
• fine tip black marker
• scissors
• glue stick or school glue

Directions for this Button Fish Craft

1. Start by cutting out a rectangle section out of your brown paper lunch bag for ocean sand. Glue it to the bottom of your blue cardstock paper.

Love Coloring? Look at these Princess coloring pages

Set aside the extra lunch bag in your paper scraps bin to use for another project. Or, if you are creating this craft with multiple children, you can get several pieces of sand from one bag.

See Also: Flower Garden Craft

2. Cut out triangle shaped tail fins for your fish from scrap pieces of paper. Arrange your buttons on your blue cardstock paper where you want to add your fish. Use an extra strength glue stick or school glue to glue down both the tail fin and buttons onto your paper to make all of your fish.

3. Crinkle up sever pieces of green tissue paper pieces. Glue them along the bottom of your paper to make ocean plants.

4. Glue small googly eyes onto each of your fish. Then use a fine tip black marker to draw a mouth on each of your fish.

TIP: We love using adhesive googly eyes on projects like these so we don’t have to wait for drying time for the little googly eyes. I find it’s hard for small children to make tiny glue dots for adding these small googly eyes, so this is another reason the adhesive on the back is super helpful. 

5. Finish your fish craft by adding paper hole reinforcers around each of your fish to make bubbles.

We love using stickers like these in our craft projects because preschoolers needing to use their hands and fingers to hold and peel off each sticker is fantastic fine motor work!

Related: Paper Plate Corduroy Craft

Looking for some fun books to go along with this craft?

Here are some of our favorite fish themed children’s books:

– Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins
– Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae
– Fabulous Fishes by Susan Stockdale

More Fun and Easy Button Crafts