Foil Mermaids

My oldest niece loves mermaids and she has had this book with mermaid crafts and has been begging me to do something from it. So today we made foil mermaids.

What you will need to make your own foil mermaid:

• White paper
• crayons/markers
• scissors
• aluminum foil
• ball point pen
• white glue
• food coloring
• thin paint brushes
• paper plate
• x-acto knife (optional) it does make cutting foil tail out easier

First you will need the Stencils to make these mermaids. 

Sorry for the colored background but its the only way my scanner would scan our sketches of the mermaids we made. 

Step 1: Once you have made your mermaids, you will need to cut them out and lay her on the shiny side of  some aluminum foil and trace around her tail up to her waist. 

Step 2: Cut out the foil tail and with a ball point pen, draw rows of scales and then draw lines on the fin at the end of her tail. 

This is a couple ideas from the book on how you could draw the scales

Step 3: Next glue the foil tail onto the mermaid. While the tail is drying this is a perfect time for the kids to color in the top part of their mermaids.

Step 4: Next you will need your paper plate, glue, and food coloring to make the paint for the tail. Squeeze two blobs of white glue onto the paper plate. Then use your food coloring to create a color and mix your food coloring and glue together.

Step 5: Then take your paint brush to paint in your mermaid's tail. After you finish painting it let it dry and your mermaid is done!

The girls really had a lot of fun making these, this project does take a good portion of time we made three of them and it took us about 2 hours to make them. Also while working with the foil for the tail be careful because it can rip easily. I suggest maybe using a heavier foil for this project, we used what we had on hand and did it but it was challenging at first. 

Note: I got this craft from the book called Mermaid things to make and do by Leonie Pratt

If you have any questions or need any help feel free to ask.