Make a gorgeous under the sea paper plate craft using natural materials collected at the beach! This is such a fun kids craft idea and is great after a family holiday or trip to the beach.

This fun little paper plate craft is so simple to set up as an invitation to create after a trip to the beach and makes a beautiful display at home or in the classroom!

Under the sea paper plate craft

Materials needed:

Paper plates (we had these small, blue ones left over from a party. White will be fine too)

sand

small shells

blue glitter glue

tissue paper in bright colours

green felt in various shades (or more tissue paper)

white glue

scissors

marker pens

I set these materials out as an invitation to come and get crafty on one rainy afternoon during the summer break. We don’t typically do a lot of crafts, leaning more towards open-ended art projects, however the girls do love to make things like this and occasionally put in a special request! They had friend over too, so it became a nice focus for a calm down activity before zooming off to play again.

They started by applying white glue to the bottom half of the paper plates, then sprinkling over the sand until it had stuck and completely covered the area. It’s important to shake off the excess at this stage, or else any of the details that are added on top will fall off with the loose sand.

Then they added the felt pieces to create sea-weed and glued little shells in different sizes and styles onto the sand. They needed quite a lot of glue to stick firmly, but once dried they stayed in place well.

Then they drew and cut out their own little fish and sea creatures from the tissue paper and added details with pens. These were stuck onto the background and the under the sea scene came to life!

Over the top of this whole scene they washed blue glitter glue, using a paintbrush. It’s hard to tell from these photographs but the plates really sparkle and twinkle in the light and look gorgeous!

They left them to dry flat overnight and now they are proudly on display alongside our 1001 other art and craft projects in the dining room!