Rainbow fish book: Koinobori paper flag

The theme for Summer reading program at our local library is "One World Many Stories". So one of the story time theme was "A child's summer in Japan" and they had organized a Koinobori contest. The Challenge of the contest - "Create your own carp flag, using your imagination to make it as textured and colorful as you please".

One of our entry(No.11) was the Koinobori paper flag. CJ won the most artistic: demonstrates a real talent for translating an idea into a work of art.


We tried to bring shine/glitter to the fish based on the Rainbow Fish Book

Book : Rainbow Fish Big Book

The Rainbow Fish is a story of a beautiful, glittery scales fish. The story has a effective message that teaches the importance of sharing and selflessness. CJ admired the beauty of the fish and was pretty impressed when the rainbow fish shared his glittery scales.


Koinobori Flag:

First I copied/traced the fish template/pattern provided to a poster board


I showed Cj how to color the scales with glitters(Dollar store find). She loved the idea of decorating the scales with glitters.

From the template, I traced the tail and face of the fish on to a silver gift paper wrap and cut them out. Cj glued them on to the poster board. She colored the background blue.


After we completed the poster board painting. I was thinking for a long time how to present it at the library. CJ came up with the idea, mommy why don't we make a flag out of it.

We had a collection of these gift wrap rolls.


I attached a plain sheet of paper to the poster board in order to get an extension. After applying glue, we warped the paper to the roll.




Koinobori paper Flag ready!

Stay tuned for two more Koinobori ideas - Glass Painting and Paper Mache!