Introduction: How to Make an Awesome Sea Gooseberry From Plastic Bottles

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About: Bobamosys stands for Bottle Based Modular Systems. It's an approach that recognizes that plastic bottles are a piece of engineering that are composed of different elements that can be processed to a new produc…

Sea gooseberries (Pleurobrachia pileus) are transparent sea creatures that have a diameter of 1 cm. They have no stinging cells and can be found in almost every ocean in the world in shallow waters. Creating this sea creature from a plastic bottle is relatively easy and is always a great fun.

Supplies

  • Plastic bottle
  • Scissors
  • Retractable blade (for this project I used a scalpel)

Step 1: Preparing the Bottle

First, rinse the bottle and let it dry. Once that is done, you can peel of the bottle’s label and take off the bottle’s cap and ring. These parts can be kept for other projects you might want to try yourself.

Step 2: Marking the Bottle

You now need to cut the bottle vertically, but in order to do that it will be easier to mark out the lines that you will cut into. Follow the bumps (corrugation) at the bottom of the bottle as seen on the photo. Mark out the sides of the bottle with small incisions where the bumps are (in dark lines) and the spaces in between them (in white lines).

You can keep dividing the bottle by making more incisions depending on how thick you would like the strips (comblike plates of the sea gooseberry) to be.

Step 3: Cutting the Bottle

Once you’re satisfied with the thickness of the strips, you can now use your scissors to cut up past the shoulder of the plastic bottle all the way to the neck. After you’ve cut the bottle vertically, it might look a bit like the photo on the right.

Step 4: Turning the Bottle Inside Out

The last step could be a bit tricky at first. But after a couple of tries, you will be able to do this last step in no time. First, split the bottle into two parts. Next, turn in the top and bottom part of the the bottle towards the middle.

Step 5: Flipping the Right and Left Side of the Bottle

You will probably will end up something that looks like a disorganized web of plastic. That's alright, you can now just flip the plastic strips one by one from right to left.

Step 6: Make the Most of Your Sea Gooseberry

Eventually, once you’ve completely turned over the entire bottle you will end up with something that looks like this. These sea gooseberries can also be used as decorations and it’s all up to your imagination. Hanging them by Christmas lights is one way of using them as a decoration.