Crafts

Milk Jug Skeleton 

I came across this nifty DIY Halloween craft on another site and thought " How cool! That looks easy!" (eye rolling). However, I can make anything more complicated without much effort. When I gathered my milk jugs, thinking this was going to be a quickie, it didn't occur to me to document the process with pictures or video, so I'll try to remember and describe the steps as best I can.

First, I was prowling the web and came across the idea on two different sites, HERE and HERE The diagrams on the second one were of great help to me.
I gathered six milk jugs, which is oddly easy for me. I rinse out our milk jugs as soon as they are empty so I have a stash. A side note here: I have an old Ajax dish soap bottle that I refill with Avon Bubble Bath (a little diluted) to use for some cleaning. I have found that if you squirt a little of the bubble bath into the newly empty jug, add some water, replace the cap and shake the jug vigorously for a moment, then dump it out and rinse out the bubbles. The jug is clean with no milk odor.
Ok so I gathered my milk jugs. I didn't have a grease pencil so I grabbed what was handy - a Crayola thin marker. I first looked at the parts that required the handles of the jugs - the hands, feet and shoulders. Using the marker, I just drew out the shapes free-hand. Whenever I wasn't happy with the shape I drew or made a mistake, I used a wet rag to wipe it off so I could do it again. My hands got some of this marker on them in this process, but I was able to scrub it off fairly easy
Once I had those parts cut out I began using the jugs to cut out the head, chest and hips from those same jugs, since these three body parts didn't need the handles. I then drew and cut out the bones and knees from the remaining two jugs.
I noticed that on the page that had the diagrams for cutting, the skeleton had been painted with glow-in-the-dark paint and I loved that! I knew I was going to do something like that on mine. I am a bit OCD and a perfectionist when it comes to art and crafting. I got carried away and every part of my skeleton has designs on them. I painted all the parts before assembling the skeleton. I used both Tulip Glow In the Dark in Natural Glow and Glo-It by DecoArt. Since the Glo-It is such a small bottle, I mixed them together. The only complaint I have is neither of these glow bright enough for my taste. I wanted this thing to glow BRIGHT and outside, it doesn't. I am thinking of making another if I can find a way to really make it G-L-O-W.
I used my Dremel tool to make the holes in the locations shown on the diagrams (on the other site) and then used fishing line to tie parts together. It may have been the way I attached the shoulders, but mine moved way to much and would not stay on the sides so I used a spot of E6000 to glue the shoulders to the top of the chest jug. Worked great!

So there is my Skeleton! It was a lot of fun to make and I already have ideas running through my head for making some different ones! :)