Stained Glass Fish for Rosh Hashanah – Tori Avey

Brenda is a crafty, creative mom who writes the blog Secret Agent Josephine. She’s also a tremendously talented graphic designer and illustrator. Brenda was kind enough to contribute some fun family project ideas to ToriAvey.com for Rosh Hashanah. This series of posts is kid and family friendly; each project will help children learn the deeper meaning of the Jewish holidays. Today’s craft: Stained Glass Fish for Rosh Hashanah

Since the fish is an important symbol for Rosh Hashanah, my daughter and I decided to make a Stained Glass Fish for the High Holidays!  We always have a lot of old crayons around just waiting to be repurposed into something more meaningful like this.

So we gathered our old crayons together, peeled off the paper and shaved them onto a big sheet of wax paper.  We worked on a cookie sheet but any surface will do.

We arranged the shavings into pretty stripes (more or less).

Next we put down another sheet of wax paper over top of the crayon shavings and then a dish towel on top of that.  I ironed the whole thing on medium heat for about twenty seconds or just long enough for the wax paper to fuse together with the crayon.  Some places had to be ironed more than others.

Once our wax paper shaving art was good and fused, we set to work creating the fish’s body.  This is really easy.  Take two sheets of 8.5×11 card stock or construction paper (we used blue) and fold them in half.  When it’s folded, cut a vase shape on the fold as shown above. Then cut a half oval out of the middle to create the fish’s belly.  Once you open the folded fish, you can then cut off the extra tail, making one side it’s head!

Now you’ll have two fishes, one for each side.  Don’t worry about the fold in the middle, It’s just a little bend that makes the fish look like he’s swimming.

Next I laid the fishes body on our wax paper-crayon art and traced around it’s body.  Then I cut out the fish shape.

I used double-sided tape to attach the frame to the wax paper art but any kind of craft glue would work.

Just place one frame on each side, glue or tape together, and you’re done!  Attach googly eyes or beads for the fish’s eyes, or you can just draw the eyes on.

We put a shish kebab skewer in the middle of ours so my daughter could use her fish as a puppet. I cut off the pointy end of the stick so it wouldn’t be sharp.

The rest was just fun!  Sound effects not included.

For this craft, here are the supplies you will need:

– Old crayons in a variety of colors
– Pencil sharpener (handheld, not electric)
– Wax paper
– Dish towel
– Iron
– Card stock or construction paper
– Scissors
– Double-sided tape, craft glue, or glue stick
– Googly eyes or beads (optional, for fish eyes)
– Shish kebab skewer (optional, to make a puppet)