How to Make a Jellyfish in a Bottle

When I showed this to my 3 year old grandson, his comment was “Wow!” and when it was time to go home; he wanted to take it home with him.  Yes, it’s that much fun, as well as easy and cheap because you use stuff from your recycle bin to create it.  So here is how to make a Jellyfish in a Bottle.

Supplies:
Empty water bottle or 2 liter bottle
Translucent grocery (t-shirt) bag
Scissors
Thread
Water
Food coloring
Label adhesive remover

Make sure your water bottle/2 liter bottle is clean and label free.  Some Goo Gone or WD40 will take off the adhesive. Fill the bottle with water and put a drop or 2 of food coloring in the water.

Shake the bottle for an even distribution of the color.  Set aside as you make the Jellyfish.

Take the almost transparent t-shirt bag and fold it flat. .

Cut off the handles and the bottom of the bag.  Cut off the area of advertising. 

That will leave you enough bag left to cut in half and you could create 2 Jellyfish.  You only need one per bottle

Take the center of the piece of t-shirt bag and make a bubble, it will be a bubble once you wrap some of the thread loosely around the area (don’t make it tight, you want to be able to add water and air to the bubble), tie the thread off. 

Turn it over; you should be able to see the hole leading to the center of the bubble.  In case you haven’t figured it out, this is the head of the Jellyfish.

Next cut the parts of the t-shirt bag, hanging down from the head. So that you will have trailing tentacles, you will be cutting more away than what you will leave behind.  Don’t have more than 18 tentacles of various lengths. 

If you leave too many, the jellyfish will not be able to swim through the water in the bottle. It will be just a big blob of tentacles, (been there done that).

Turn the Jelly fish over and find the opening to the head.  Blow into the opening to fill it with air.  Add enough water so that the head is half filled with air and half filled with water. 

Twist the head tight.  Stuff it and the tentacles into the water bottle and screw on the cap tight.