Caroline
We love making ocean themed crafts in the summer so I was super excited when I found out that the Kids Craft Stars challenge this month was creating an ocean craft. One of our favorite ocean animals is the Octopus. We’ve already made several Octopus crafts over the last few years, but we decided to create another one for the challenge and this time we added a fun component to it, puffy paint. If you haven’t made puffy paint before, it’s a must try! It’s super simple to make and it gives a fun texture in crafts just like in our Puffy Paint Octopus Kid Craft.
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Supplies needed:
- large foam sheet (color of your choice)
- acrylic paint (color your choice)
- bubble wrap
- Elmer’s school glue
- shaving cream
- large wiggly eyes*
- paint brush
- tacky glue
Tutorial:
1. Cut out octopus body
Start by cutting an octopus body shape out of your large foam sheet. We made ours super big, but you can scale it down and make it whatever size you would like.
2. Prepare paint
Mix up your puffy paint. Here is how we make it: Mix 1/4 cup of Elmer’s school glue into a small bowl. Add a squirt or two of your acrylic paint and mix it into the glue to color it. Add 1/4 cup of shaving cream into the glue mixture and fold it all together.
3. Paint octopus
Paint your octopus with the puffy paint. Older kids will probably cover the entire octopus, younger kids may only cover a small portion. Set it aside to dry completely. (Note: Depending on how thick the puffy paint is applied, it may take up to 24 hours to dry.)
4. Now paint bubble wrap
After painting your octopus, get out your piece of bubble wrap and paint it with the colors of your choice. Se it aside to dry.
5. Cut and glue strips
Once your pieces have dried, cut 8 strips out of your bubble wrap for the octopus legs. Use tacky glue to glue them onto the back of your octopus.
6. Glue wiggly eyes
Finish your octopus by gluing your two large wiggly eyes on him.
I love the fun texture created on the octopus with the puffy paint and the bubble wrap looks like little octopus suckers which is super fun! After the glue is finished drying, kids can pick up their octopus and swirl around it’s wiggly legs and pretend that he is swimming in the ocean.
