Just Keep Swimming Dory Fishbowl

I work for the State and right now we are dealing with a lot of budget issues, as are many companies and agencies.  When someone quits we don’t usually get to replace them so we are working with less and less staff as the years go on.  My boss tells us to “just keep swimming, just keep swimming”.  She has been looking for a Dory print or something with this saying on it.  I found this fun Dory fishbowl on the Expressions Vinyl Facebook page and I knew I had to make one for her office…and ours, of course.

 

 

Just Keep Swimming Dory Fishbowl

I have included some affiliate links for your convenience.  You can read my full disclosure here.

 

Materials Needed:

Fishbowl with flat sides

Rubbing Alcohol

Cotton Balls

Glitter Vinyl

Silhouette or Cricut 

Clear Contact Paper

Glass gems – I used a combination of blue and clear

Dory Water Activated Toy

Water

 

Cleaning the fishbowl

The first thing I did was clean the flat sides of the fishbowl with rubbing alcohol.  I used a cotton ball and just wiped it down good so the vinyl would have a nice, clean surface to stick to.

 

Cutting Out The Design

In this case the design is the saying “just keep swimming”  I used a basic Ariel font and made sure the size of the words on the screen were the size I wanted on the fishbowl.  

Here is a screenshot of my Silhouette design space.

 

 

 

This vinyl is a little thicker than the regular vinyl so I set the blade to a 3 instead of a 2.  It worked perfectly.

I used clear contact paper to transfer the words from my cutting mat to the fish bowl.  You can see a detailed tutorial for this step in this mini wagon post.

 

 

Then I slowly removed the clear contact paper leaving behind the glitter letters.

 

 

 

Putting It All Together

Once the vinyl was I added in the glass gems.

 

 

Next I added water and Dory!

 

 

Take a look at how cute this is in action!

 

 

 

Super cute, right!  Now Dory lives in our office on our counter.

 

 

 

 

 

All we have to do to get her swimming again is tap on the glass.  She re-activates and starts swimming around.  The toy comes ready with a battery and with 3 more in the packaging.  

My boss hasn’t gotten hers yet but I can’t wait for her to see it.  She will be so excited!

What do you think?  It is just a fun, easy project!

 

For more fun projects check out these galleries:

Craft Projects

Silhouette Projects

Recycle/Upcycle

Furniture Makeovers

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Michelle