Planet Mobile & UFOs

We didn’t do our art project yesterday, so we did two today!

Carolyn included for scale.

First up: planets.

As usual, gather the supplies first!
Proto-planets!

My biscuit cutters came in handy tracing circles, and I was inspired by this post to make a couple of ovals for rings.  The crescent moons were mostly to use up as much cardstock as possible.

Well-used watercolors.

Then we broke out the watercolors.  I thought for sure the girls would want to glue bits of tissue paper on the planets, but they were happy to paint.  So we painted!

A red planet.
A green planet.
A plethora of planets, drying.

After the planets were dry, we punched holes in them and strung them up with crochet cotton, cut the fish lines off of our stick, and tied the planets in their place.

I love how this came out!

Now we have an “out of this world” door decoration!

"Mama, why are we using eggs?"

While the planets were drying, we made some UFOs.  I cut up an egg carton for the UFO tops, and then used mini cupcake liners for the bottoms.

It's like the man in the moon, if the moon were made of paper products.
These were green to start out with...
...so watercolors might not have been the best choice!

The girls painted these, and we let them dry with the planets.

UFOs, ready for assembly.

When all the bits were dry, we fashioned landing gear from chenille stems by cutting about 2″ from one end, bending it in half, and twisting it with the bottom inch of the remaining stem.  Then we stuck the stem up through the mini cupcake liner, then up through the egg carton piece.  (I poked a hole in the egg cup first so it wouldn’t tear.)

Landing gear down, ready for invasion!

We wound the remaining stem around bamboo grilling skewers.

Unidentified flying egg cartons...?

And now we have a fleet of UFOs hanging from our kitchen ceiling.  (Doesn’t everybody?)