When my son was turning two we watched a lot of Toy Story 1 through 3. He was obsessed with those movies, so of course I thought it would be the perfect theme for his second birthday party. I was so excited about this theme because of the endless possibilities this had for crafting. I will provide instructions for each decoration used in my son’s birthday party in a series of posts.
I knew that I needed to make the aliens and the crane because I planned on turning my covered awning where I planned to serve the pizza from into my outdoor version of the Pizza Planet from the movie. I scoured Pinterest looking for ideas and actually came up empty handed on the aliens – I was just going to have to improvise and share my creation on Pinterest for others! I had some left over Styrofoam balls and some TP cardboard tubes that I stash for crafting that I just knew that I could do something with, but how? I then had a really brilliant plan that I was going to cover the Styrofoam with home made play dough and paint them green!
As you can see this plan was flawed. I was also going to make my own eyes – yes this was starting to look like a “Cake Boss” gone wrong moment, but I was determined to figure something out. It occurred to me that a better plan would be to make the play dough in neon green color and glue on googley eyes. The final affect was worth making the second batch of play dough even though I lost a lot of time with the failed attempt.
Materials Needed to Make the Alien:
- Play dough (instructions included)
- Googley Eyes
- Styrofoam balls
- Tooth pick
- Modge Podge glue
- Crayola foam air clay in purple
- Blue straws
- Yellow and red paint
- Sharpie
- Navy blue felt
- Elmers glue
- Hot glue and gun
- Scissors or cutting mat and cutter for more precision
- Bright blue acrylic paint
Materials Need for Play dough recipe:
- 1/2 Cup of Flour
- 1 Cup of Water
- 2 TSP Cream of Tartar
- 1/3 Cup Salt
- 1 TBSP Vegetable Oil
- Neon Green Food Coloring
Play Dough Instructions:
- In a 2 quart saucepan, add 1 cup of flour, 2 teaspoons of cream of tarter, and 1/3 cup of salt.
- Add 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.
- Turn on your burner to medium/low and stir. Don’t worry about lumps, it’ll turn out fine trust me!
- Keep stirring until it starts getting a little solid. Don’t worry about remaining lumps, we take care of them later. This can take anywhere from 20 – 30 seconds if your stove was already heated up or up to 3 minutes if it’s steel heating up.
- Once it gets smooth and glossy looking add the food coloring.
Making the Aliens:
- Cover the Styrofoam ball with a thin layer of play dough. We are just trying to smooth out the surface and turn him green.
- Take some play dough and work it between your fingers rolling into a tear drop shape, use your pinky to make the ears look a little more 2D for inner ear shape and smooth to the side of the head after scoring the surface a little with a tooth pick to help it stay in place.
- Roll play dough around the side of a tooth pick and then roll a ball with your fingers for the antenna. Try to smooth the ball on the end eliminating the seem if possible.
- Rest aliens on the card board TP tubes over night to allow the play dough to completely dry.
- The aliens look dry and crusty – DON’T worry this is normal. Paint a layer of the Modge Podge on the alien heads. Wait for this to dry, it should take only a few minutes in the mean time lets move on to the body.
- Paint the TP tubes bright blue for the body.
- Cut thin rectangular strips of felt for their belts. Cut out a small square for the belt buckle just slightly wider than the rectangular strips so it overlaps all sides when assembled.
- Now that the Modge Podge has dried use your glue gun to glue on the three googley eyes.
- Use your sharpie to draw on the mouths of each of your aliens. I made them wide like they were staring up at the claw saying “the claw” because I was going to reenact the claw scene on my cake table.
- With the yellow paint add a yellow circle then make a ring around it on the TP near the aliens right shoulder. Use the red pain to add dots for the peperoni on the pizza.
- Use the hot glue gun to glue the belt in place in the center on the TP tube.
- Cut your straws into the desired length you want for their arms.
- Use more play dough to form the hands into three leaf clover like shapes and press on the end of the straw just hard enough to imprint the end and still pull it off again. Allow to dry completely over night.
- Once the hands have hardened over night, paint on The Modge Podge to make the skin smooth and glossy.
- Use the purple air clay to roll into strips to wrap around the neck for the collar of the aliens suit. I then just glued it directly on and then glued on the heads.
- Use the Elmers glue to glue on the hands to the end of the straw and then use your glue gun to glue the arms to the body. Add a dab of hot glue and allow to cool a few seconds before placing the straw. Make sure when you add the straw you allow glue to enter the center of the straw so you can push it down flat against the cardboard tube.
Voila! Now you have a crew of aliens for your cake table or a center piece for your table. Next time in this series I will explain how to make the claw for those of you that may want to reenact the claw scene too! This was such a fun party to decorate for and it was so worth it to make the decorations myself- the look on his face when we gave him his Woody for his birthday said it all.
As always remember it’s all for the love of craft!
She's One Crafty Mom 