Introduction: Simple Paper Glowing Aquarium Coral Reef

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About: Maker guy with a lot of love for paper and cardboard. Recently also working with recycled plastics. other related interests are photography, youtube, recycling, etc :-)

Hello everyone. In this project i'll show you how to make a very cool and simple paper coral reef with clown fishes :-). It's at its best in the dark while you explore it with a little mini blacklight making it feel like you are doing a night dive. Hope you enjoy this project.

Supplies

The things you will need are mainly basics. The only tool that you probably need to buy somewhere online is a mini blacklight torchlight. Something like this will do the trick:

https://www.amazon.com/Flashlight-Portable-Ultraviolet-Detector-Batteries/dp/B00GU55270/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=mini+black+light&qid=1667566654&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI1LjAxIiwicXNhIjoiNC44MCIsInFzcCI6IjQuNDcifQ%3D%3D&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&smid=AAF37WJS3P6BT


For the rest you will need:

Printer and printable heavyweight paper ( around 200gms), regular fluor markers, scissors, craft knife, ruler, scoring tool, other markers in various colours, paper cup, skewers, hot glue gun, hobby glue

Step 1: Making the Clownfishes

Print the files and start colouring the clownfishes. The print is basic so there is room for detailing. When the colour work is done, you can cut them out. They are quite small and very curvy so i would suggest to use a craftsknife rather then a scissor. When cut out, fold the fish, add a drop of glue to the inside of the tail and hold the 2 sides of the tail together. In the meantime you can insert the little fins.

Step 2: Making the Corals

The corals are quite easy. randomly draw horizontal lines on the template and use at least 1 fluor colour. Cut out the shape and use your crafts knife to make thin strips. Curl the strips and glue the coral in position. make a few and vary in colour and sizes so you have a nice diversity in your reef.

Step 3: Assemble the Reef

Glue the corals onto a paper cup using hotglue. Use skewer sticks to make the fish 'swim' and attach with hot glue. Hot glue saves a lot of time holding things in position so its really advised to use it instead of other glue. You are ready! Switch of the lights and check it out with the blacklight torch!

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