May the year bring you prosperity.  The fish symbol promises prosperity to the home it lives in.  Bring in more wealth and happiness with this poster for the Chinese New Year.

Supplies you will need:

A glue stick, pencil, marker, scissors, ruler, string, Chinese New Year “banner” (1/2″x3″), a 8.5×11″ construction paper, 3 pieces of 4″ square paper, 6 pony beads and glue dots.

Make the fish

1. Fold a square paper in half to form a triangle.
2. Fold one triangle edge to the middle crease made on the square paper.
3. Fold this triangle over onto itself again.

Cuts for the fish parts

1. You should end up with overlapping triangles.
2. Draw a curved line on the folded triangle beginning at the corner of the fold.
3. Cut along the line drawn.  Save the cut pieces.
   

   

   
4. The smaller cut piece will be used for tail and fins.
5. Fold the body piece in half.  Make straight cuts 1/4″ away from the curve “v”.
6. You should have parallel lines cut across within 1/2″ from tip.
   

   

   

Forming the fish body

1. Open all folds and fold over the two sides to the middle.
2. Apply glue to one side of the fold.
3. Overlap fold onto the glued fold.

Forming the fins and tails

Using the saved piece from step 4 of “Cuts for the fish parts”.   ** I will use a yellow piece now for contrast coloring on the fish.

1. Fold the tail piece in half.
2. Make a cut across the tail piece.  This cut will create different shapes of fins for your fish.  A wider cut or narrower cut across will create fins of different shapes.  Play around to get some interesting shapes for your fish.

1. There are many ways to create a variety of fish shapes.  In the pictures below we use the triangle piece for the tail and on another fish we used this piece for the fins.
2. To continue, cut the longer piece for the fins and glue them onto the fish.  You can move the piece around until you are happy with the shape of the fish.

Using glue dots and pony beads, mark were the eyes should go and glue bead in place.

Your fish is complete.

Putting it altogether

1. Make 2 more fishes.
2. Move the fish and New Year Greetings into desired places of an 8.5×11 sheet of paper.
3. Glue all greetings and fishes onto the poster paper.
4. Draw in lines for the “water”.
   

   

   

   

新年快樂!

Happy Chinese New Year!