Rainbow Fish Pumpkin Decorating Instructions and Photos

Creating a storybook themed pumpkin is a challenge many of us parents take on every October. This year for my daughters first grade class I decided to make a Rainbow Fish pumpkin with the class. The whole project was completed without spending much money. If you prep everything at home before you make the Rainbow Fish pumpkin with the class, it will run smoothly and without a huge mess in the classroom.

How to create a Rainbow Fish pumpkin

1.) The first step in creating a Rainbow Fish pumpkin is finding a good shaped pumped. You want a pumpkin that is more oval than round. The pumpkin will need to rest on it's side, so take that into consideration when choosing your pumpkin. The cost for pumpkin varies, expect to spend about $10.00 for a large pumpkin.

2.) Paint the pumpkin blue all over. I chose to use "Pool Blue" paint by Apple Barrel. It's cheap, only .99 a bottle. I bought 3 bottles just in case. You will need to do 3-4 coats of paint on your pumpkin to cover it well.

3. Design a master template for your Rainbow Fish scales. I made our scales approximately 1 inch long.

4.) Cut your colored scales out of tissue paper using your template. I chose to use pink, blue, green, purple, and orange for my scales. You can easily cut out multiple scales at once by folding your tissue paper and then tracing your scale on it. You may even try to fold 5 sheets together at once to make the process go faster.

5.) Make glittery scales for your Rainbow Fish pumpkin. I cut scales out of silver tissue paper. after I had enough scales for each child, I put a light coat of Aleene's tacky glue on the scales. I then covered the scales in a thick silver glitter. If use use glitter glue the scales do not look shiny enough.

6.) After the paint on the pumpkin dries, it's a good idea to use a pencil to draw lines on the pumpkin where your scales will be. I drew the lines approximately half an inch apart. You want your scales to over lap half way to give the pumpkin a more realistic look.

7.) Design fins for your fish pumpkin. I used a thin poster board.

8.) Decorate your fins. I used Spectra bleeding art tissue paper to "paint" my fins. I simply tore little pieces of the tissue paper and placed them over the fins. I used a spray bottle to mist the tissue paper. After a few minutes, simply remove the bleeding art tissue paper and your fins will look like they were painted with watercolors.

9.) After the fins dry decorate them. I used Aleene's tacky glue to make squiggly lines and then used a thick silver glitter to cover the glue. Shake off excess glitter and let dry.

10.) Create a yellow mouth out of Crayola Model Magic.

Now you have everything prepped to create your Rainbow Fish pumpkin with the children.

11. Have the children start placing the scales at the back (the stem) of the pumpkin. If you place thin lines of glue on the guidelines your drew the process goes fast. Letting the children place the glue on individual scale creates a mess and slows the process down. Remind the children to overlap and alternate colors of the scales.

12. Have and adult hot glue the fins, eyes, and mouth on.

Your Rainbow Fish pumpkin should now be complete. I hope you have as great of a time as I did decorating our classes children's storybook themed pumpkin.

Supplies needed to create a Rainbow Fish children's storybook themed pumpkin:

- Large oval pumpkin, approximately $10.00
- Blue acrylic paint. I used Apple Barrel "Pool Blue" paint, approximately $3 for 3 bottles
-Large googly eyes, approximately. $1
- Yellow Model Magic for mouth, approximately $4
- Tissue paper for scales. I used pink, blue, green, purple, orange, and silver, approximately $4
- 1 bottle of Aleene's tacky glue, approximately $1.25
- 2 sheets of thin poster board for fins, approximately $2
- Thick silver glitter, approximately $2