Hot Mess Mom Approved DIY Jet Pack

Recently I decided to tackle a pin that had been on my kid board for way too long, a DIY Jet Pack. I quickly browsed the directions and realized I had (mostly) everything I needed but I decided to make some modifications. Here's how I did it.

Look at that face all aglow with forced excitement while I screamed "Smile! SMILE!" I know, I'm the best. He did have a lot of fun with it though, so here's how I did it.

What You'll Need:

• Red and/or orange felt sheets
• Two large soda bottles
• Hot glue
• Scissors
• A piece of cardboard (or you can cheat like me and use a sheet of foam, the kind that's sticky on one side)
• Duct tape
• 2 Adhesive Velcro stickers
• Straps or Elastic (optional if you don't want to use duct tape)
• Silver spray paint

Let's do this thang!

1. First off, you're going to need to chug the soda from two huge bottles of soda or you can be a spoil sport and grab some from your recycling bin if you have them or borrow them from a friend. One way or another, you must procure the sacred pop bottles.

2. Go somewhere where you won't gas yourself with toxic spray paint fumes, lay some cardboard down, place your soda bottles on top of the cardboard so you don't make a mess, hold your breath, and spray the bottles with silver spray paint, running away immediately after so you can breathe again.

3. After the spray paint has dried on the bottles, you need to mount them on top of a piece of cardboard or a sheet of foam like I did which eliminates having to hot glue these suckers down. First, though, you can use some duct tape to keep the soda bottles together before sticking them down.

4. Use hot glue to stick your bottles to the cardboard, or just smush your bottles against the sticky adhesive backing of the foam sheet if you decided to use my method. Virtual high-five to you, sir or madam.

5. I free-handed the flames on my felt, I did a larger flame using red felt and then a smaller flame using orange felt, but if you want yours to look nicer than mine or aren't super confident in your free-handing skills, I'm certain you can find a template on Google because you can find anything on Google. If you do use two or more colors (oh, you fancy, huh?) simply hot glue the pieces on top of each other.  Make sure to leave a longer end on the biggest flame so you can feed it through the mouth of the soda bottle and hot glue it to the rim. Hot glue all over this mutha! 

6. The tutorial I saw on Doodlecraft recommends using straps and I've also seen guides that say to use elastic but all I had was Duct Tape so that's what I used. For my straps, I measured my son's upper arms, where they meet his armpits, and gave him another inch or so of space, cut two pieces of duct tape that length, and stuck them sticky side to sticky side, then used another piece of duct tape to close the loop. I did this again to make another arm loop. I had a hard time trying to wing it from there and it was a complete mess of trial and lots of error until my "Aha!" moment came. I could use Velcro! First, I used more duct tape to stick my loops to the foam board and I went around the entire thing, going over the soda bottles and everything. Then I cut my loops in the center. I grabbed my Velcro stickers and attached those to the ends of the Duct tape straps I cut, rough side of the Velcro under the top strap's end, soft side on top of the bottom strap's end. Brilliant!  Now you have an easy way to put on and take off the straps.

I hope you enjoyed this soda bottle jet pack DIY. Pour yourself a glass of the good stuff, pat yourself on the vag, and smile while people comment on what a cool, fun mom you are for doing this for your kid.