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Your child will love making this colorful bag to carry his towel, sunglasses, sunscreen and water toys in. A fun summer project to be proud of!

What you'll need:

How to make it:

1. Iron the canvas tote to ensure a flat surface for painting on.
2. First stamp on the fish. Paint each stamp, one fish is orange the other is green. Press down firmly onto the surface of the tote. Carefully lift off the stamp.
3. The fish may be too light if you are using a dark tote bag. Use a medium flat paint brush to add more paint to the fish designs.
4. Using the liner brush, paint in the small details on the fish such as the fins and eyes. On the orange fish, paint the fins blue, on the green fish, use yellow. Use black and white to paint on the eyes.
5. Paint the star shaped stamp pink, stamp onto tote in lower left hand corner.
6. Using the large scruffy brush, pick up some tan paint. Dab off excess onto a paper towel. Dab “sand” onto bottom of tote for ocean floor. Dab tan paint over the “feet” of the starfish.
7. Paint the shell stamp with cream, stamp onto lower left of tote bag. Dab a little tan paint over the bottoms of the shells so they appear to be sitting in the sand.
8. You will need foam stamp alphabet letters to spell out “BEACH FUN”. Start by setting the letters onto the bag for placement (upper right corner). Once you have them where you want them, paint then stamp each letter in place.
9. Put some light blue paint onto a paper plate. Pick up some paint with the large scruffy brush, then dab off most of the paint onto a piece of paper towel. Brush should have very little paint on it. Using a sweeping motion, paint on the “water” around the fish, star, and ocean floor. Add more paint when needed, dabbing off the excess each time you add more paint.
10. Let dry overnight before using.

Tips:

• When shopping for a tote bag, you can find bags that are “ready to paint”, meaning you will not have to wash it first. Check the labels to see if it requires washing prior to painting.
• If you have these colors on hand, but you have acrylic paints instead, you can add textile medium to create your own fabric paints. Simply add one part textile medium to two parts acrylic paint.
• We recommend using a colorful tote instead of white or cream so that the ocean scene will show up vividly. If you do decide to use a lighter color, use black or brown for the words “BEACH FUN” instead of white. Use gray instead of cream for the shells.

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