Jet Packs for a 3 year old birthday party...

First off, this was not my idea. My wife found these rocket jet packs on the internet when searching for party favors for our son's rocket birthday party. I am merely documenting it, since I have to build like 14 or 15 of these bad boys. We decided to make them in advance as "favors" and not as day-of party craft items merely because of the amount of "adult-construction" involved. If they were easier for little hands to create - they might have been cool craft builds.

Step one: Assemble empty plastic bottles and remove the labels. Also remove the caps as the bottles tend to maintain their air tight environment with the caps on. After I washed them off, I left them out in the sun so that they would completely dry out. I also made sure I had a bottle "mate" for each bottle. A bottle that held the same style shape and size.



Then I ran a simple bead of hot glue down the portion of the bottle that still had the label residue on it. I am not using the hot glue as my only support, but merely as a "place holder" so that the bottles don't roll or move during the next process. You will see what I mean.

We probably will not go with the silver tape straps, only because it's so time consuming to line up two sides together and lay them flat without wrinkles and folds. So this was just a test run for reference

We bought silver plastic party cups for the propulsion bells. Using a utility knife, I cut an "X" from end to end



Next I draped hot glue over the "X" and slammed each cup down over a bottle spout until the plastic cup rested against the bottle.



So now the jet pack looks like this:

So a lot happened (that my wife updated that we didn't get pictures of) First, we bought silver duct tape and used that around the jet pack cannisters and the exhaust bells to hold the newly cut pleather straps on.



Next, we filled the exhaust bells (silver cups) with orange tissue paper (the kind you would stick in a birthday present) and red shiney wrapping paper for the flames.



So this is what it looks like as a completed jet pack - now we have to make 14 more....

lol, that's pretty sweet. I bet he loved it.

Here is the tape we got from Lowes:



So for the assembly line process of making the multiple Jet Packs:

1. When making multiple bells, I found it best to stack 2 cups together and cut them 2 at a time for rigidity:



2. Next we filled the bottles with the packing peanuts:



3.Cups on bottles:



4. Then we began to assemble the pleather straps using hot glue.











5. Next we began to wrap 3 pieces of the silver duct tape around the places where we glued the straps.

This is a neat idea... I may end up using this one sometime maybe even for my birthday, lol

Very cool and clean idea...I'm sure the kids loved them.

Really Cool idea =)