ALIEN ABDUCTION NITE LITE

(Picture with the lights off and spaceship light on) My inspiration for this project was Heather of Dollar Store Crafts creation: http://dollarstorecrafts.com/2009/03/alien-lamp/comment-page-1/#comment-1241 except I made mine is a nite lite with a mini touch light from the Dollar Tree, made Shaun The Sheep to be abducted by aliens and my space ship is removeable and can "fly" off on its own (picked up by the string). While Shaun the Sheep is larger than the ship and it doesn't seem like it would be possible for the UFO to abduct him, keep in mind it is alien advanced technology at work here. The components for this are:

• UFO made from Dollar Store items (be sure to save the plastic covering off of the mini-touch light as it will be glued to the top of the glass) http://craftsandcreationswithkathy.blogspot.com/2009/04/ufo-from-dollar-store-and-upcycled.html
• Shaun The Sheep - here is a link to the how-to that I posted at Cut Out and Keep -http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/shaun_the_sheep_2 or you could use a small plastic animal or a small action figure.
• Glass (this one is a plastic one from Dollar Tree is clear with green around the top that gives it an eerie glow).
• Forest Gren Felt (for the grass)
• Plastic lid (to glue the "grass" on to)
• 9001 glue or other strong, clear glue
• 12 oz can of soda
• Pen
• Scissors

Trim the edge off the outside of the covering off of the mini-touch light.

Apply glue to the bottom of the glass then place the plastic off of the mini touch light upside down on it like so:

Put a 12 oz can of soda or other soft drink (I guess you could use a beer if you were so inclined) on inside the top off the mini-touch light and allow the glue to dry. Put the lid on the felt and use a pen to trace around the circumference, then cut out the felt where you traced. Turn the lid upside down, apply glue and then place the felt in the center and smooth it down. Place Shaun or whatever critter that is to be considered for abduction in the center of the lid, then place the glass over the top of them and put the spaceship inside the the top off of the mini-touch light and you have yourself an Alien Abduction Nite Lite! I entered this in Instructable's Mother's Day contest just for the fun of it. ALIEN ABDUCTION NITE LITE - More DIY How To Projects

SHAUN THE SHEEP MADE FROM MINI EASTER EGG

SPRING IN A JAR 3D PHOTO FRAME

This is my new desk decoration for work - I call it my "happy place". I saw photos put in jars on Photojojo and it inspired this project. http://photojojo.com/content/diy/glass-jar-photo-frames/

BEFORE:

Item bought from Dollar Tree:

• Blue Star Shaped Glass Stones (to represent water from all the spring rain - we have a lot of flooding in the Spring where I live).
• Scrapbook Stickers (I chose these because they reminded more more of things my son does and things we see - our local zoo opens in the Spring and they have train that we always would ride, my son uses his skateboard on the sidewalk, the net for when he used to go fishing with his Grandpa before he passed away, and bugs).
• Easter Grass (to represent the grass getting greener and growing).
• Flowers (to represent the flowers that start to grow).

COST: $4 Things I already had on hand:

• Old candle jar.
• Photo of my son at Air Zoo in Battlecreek, MI that I took on a field trip for his school in Spring when he was in the 8th grade.
• Components to make "Shaun The Sheep" (made out of cotton from an asprin bottle, googly eyes that had come off of other project and scraps of black fabric) - I was going for more the look of the animals with suction cups that you stick on a car window - as a user commented on my blog, he does sort of look like pickled sheep).

AFTER:

I cropped the photo then put it in the jar, then put the blue star stones in the bottom, put in some pieces off the flower and Shaun the Sheep (yep, have to agree with one comment I received where he sort of does look like pickled sheep here), then added the Easter grass in the center.

To top it off, I pulled more flowers off and stuck them in the center so they stuck up outside of the jar, then put the lid on the jar. I then put the stickers on the outside of the jar to make it even more 3-D. ***UPDATE*** This was submitted as an idea at Familycrafts@About.com as part of a challenge on what to do with an empty jar and it was one of the three items featured. http://familycrafts.about.com/library/projects/blscrapbookjar.htm

Shaun the Sheep

He is a component in another project I am making with a Spring theme and I decided to use Shaun the Sheep as a "window decoration" kind of like the critters you see suction cupped to car windows. Shaun is almost entirely made out of upcycled items - the cotton is from an asprin bottle, the black fabric is scraps and the googly eyes were ones that had come off of other projects - just the fabric paint for the nostril and the hot glue from the glue I used to glue him together was not. Items used to make:

• Cotton (from an asprin bottle)
• Black fabric, scraps for face and legs (I used polyester, but any stiffer black fabric, felt or fleece would do, If you wanted to make him so he could stand, you could use twist ties off painted black or pipe cleaners instead).
• Googly eyes (these were ones fallen off of other projects)
• Glue Gun and glue sticks
• Fabric paint (used to make the nostrils on his face).

To make him, I looked at pictures at his website http://www.shaunthesheep.com/make/ as inspiration and winged it from there (If you have a printer you could probably download his picture and use that as template - I don't own a printer and anything I want to print out I go to the library and pay 5 cents a sheet to print, so I rarely do print anything off - beside that, it was 4 in the morning and the library was closed).

The face shape is sort of oval with the bottom being wee bit wider than the top.

The legs are made out of strip of fabric about 1/2 inch wide and about 5 inches long, then folded in half and knots tied at about an inch in between, then cut off below he knot - the knot makes his feet and the skinny part is his legs.

His ears are from two strips of fabric about 1/4 inch wide and an inch long and rounded and the outer edged, then tapered in slightly on each side going towards his head.

Cut about a 1/2 inch of the cotton off and use the glue gun to attach it to the back of his head. Glue the ears on each side below the fluff of cotton. Glue the eyes onto his face, then two dots of fabric paint to make his nostrils.

Fluff up the cotton body. To make the tail, take a bit of the cotton and twist is several times. Glue the head to the body, then legs, with the hot glue gun.

Here he is finished.