Make a cardboard circle
Trace your drinking glass or other round thing on a piece of sturdy cardboard. Cut it out.
Make your bubble wrap stamp
Use your cardboard circle as a template to cut out a circle of bubble wrap. Then, glue the bubble wrap to the cardboard and let it dry while you find your other supplies. Make sure the bubbles are facing up when you glue!
Print your bubble wrap body
To make the puffer fish's body, use two colors of paint. We like to use a lighter color like white for the belly and a darker color for it's back and fins. Blend the colors together with your foam brush. When colors blend together like this, it's called ombre. Make sure you cover every bubble with paint to get a nice, even print.
When you're ready to print, place your painted stamp face-down on your paper, press firmly, then pick it straight up again. You don't want the stamp to move side to side or it will smudge your puffy bubble-wrap texture.
Add the face
To make the face, we used the back of our foam brush as a stamp. It was the perfect size to make two round black eyes and one red, kissy-faced mouth.
If you don't have a foam brush handle to stamp with, you could also use the back of a pencil, a wooden down, or anything else small and round. Alternatively, let your paint dry and glue on googly or paper eyes!
Give your puffer some spikes
Use a marker that matches your pufferfish's body color to make small dashes all around your puffer's body. These are it's pointy spikes.
Add some background
We really wanted to give our puffer fish some personality, so we made some bubbles by stamping white paint circles with the back of our foam brush. Then, we used a regular paint brush to make some green seaweed for it to swim in.
Make the fins
To make the pufferfish's fins, use a plastic spoon as a stamp. Dip the back of the spoon in the same paint as your puffer's body color, then press the spoon against the fish's sides. The spoon gives it a nice oval shape, but you can also just paint the fins with a paintbrush if you'd prefer.
Add the finishing touches
Once our pufferfish was dry, we added the words "I'm stuck on you."
Our puffer still looked a little lonely, so we used markers to add some sand and a few friends. Get creative! What kind of ocean scene will you create?
We made this project for Father's Day, but it would also make a great Valentine or card for mom or grandparents.