When playing with your baby, you often manage to create something new and unusual with your own hands. It could be a castle from a construction set that is not provided for in the assembly instructions, a doll made from an ordinary knitted sock, or... an aquarium with a fish swimming in it!
To create a toy mini-aquarium you need very little:
- a small jar (this can be a decorative jar or a beautifully shaped 500 ml marinade jar);
- lid to the jar (preferably screw-on);
- self-hardening mass for modeling (excellent material for creativity is provided by the Kalyaka-Malyaka brand);
- plastic fish (there are probably a couple of small fish in your child’s toy arsenal);
- thin fishing line or monofilament, thick needle;
- thin wire for creating frames of underwater plants.
Let's get to work. In order to equip our aquarium-jar, you need to make several aquarium accessories (in principle, you can use ready-made plastic flora, buying it in the store, but we will do it ourselves). We take the wire and make a frame to create the coral - we make it small, since the modeling mass will allow us to build an impressive structure on top of the frame (it is very light and hardens quickly).
From the mixed yellow and green masses we make a base stand for the coral, using a sharp object to slightly loosen the surface for naturalness.
We insert the frame for the coral into the stand and begin to slowly cover it with red mass.
Now that the frame is covered with mass, it is easier for us to attach small parts that extend beyond the frame, since the modeling mass has high adhesion and, due to its lightness, does not pull down, as would be the case with ordinary plasticine.
Small green plants can be sculpted without a frame, which is what we did, trying to make them resemble sea plants in their shape.
While the plants dry out a little, we make a mount for hanging the fish in our aquarium. To do this, put a little blue mass on the lid, form a ball and make a hole in it, attach the ball in the center of the lid. A fishing line will be threaded into the hole of the ball, at the other end of which a fish will be suspended.
The set of accessories for a “sea day” is ready, the mount for the fish is also ready, all that remains is to make a stand for the plants - that is, the bottom itself.
We take the green and yellow mass and form the bottom, using a little imagination - we have yellow sand and greenery here, a little algae around the edges.
We do not let the bottom dry out and carefully immerse it in the jar, press it with a pencil to the glass bottom, straighten the algae and lower the same one and attach our slightly dried plants to the not yet frozen bottom (they are still damp below).
We take the fish and, having made a hole in the back with an awl or scissors, insert a fishing line into it, tie two knots and cut off the small end of the fishing line, the second, long end, thread it through the hole of the ball on the lid a couple of times, do not cut the fishing line so that you can vary its length.
As for the water - you can pour it, or you don’t have to pour it, due to the fact that there is little space inside the jar due to the plants, due to the effect of thick glass, it seems that there is already water in the aquarium. If the water is poured, then very quickly all the algae, fishing line and fish will become covered with small bubbles, which does not look very good. Screw the lid on and the fish looks great in our aquarium!
