Milk Jug Skeleton

[arianna]

MM! Anyone happen to have instructions for this craft. I have saved a zillion milk jugs only to find I misplaced the instructions. Any other crafts ideas for the jugs are welcomed as well. TIA! ßß!

[Lynda/WA]

I've made them and have a copy of McCall's Creates trick or Trash number 15184.

Start with 7 clean jugs. I found the ones without indented circles (with the company logo inside) worked the best. First one is for the head. It goes spout down handle to the bak of the head. Cut out a jack o lantern style face. Puncture a hole through the ribbing of the spout on oppisite sides. I put my holes on the spout so they would line up with the ears (if it had one). These holes will be used to thread lacing through and attach it to the next jug underneath it (the rib jug).
Next jug also goes spout down and handle to the back. This is for the rib cage. Cut out four sets of ribs on each side with a rounded off triangle at the bottom for the sternum. Cut the handle out from the back in an oval sized shape. This handle will be trimmed to a shoulder blade(I'll explain that later). Punture two holes at the top center of the jug. The top now is the flat part where you would have set the jug when it was used for milk. The former bottom of the jug. Thread glow in the dark plastic lacing (stuff for lanyards) through the two holes in the spout of the head and the two holes on the flat top of the rib cage. Tie off. Leave a little space between the two jubs so the skeletan has room to swing in the breeze.
Next jug will be the pelvis and hip area. This one goes spout up. The spouts of the rib cage jug and pelvis/hip jug will meet together like a waist. Cut large ovals out from both the handle side and the opposite side from the handle. Again the handle will form a shoulder blade. Puncture a two holes in The rib jug spout and the pelvis/hip jug spout. Tie together with lacing.
That's the body of the skeleton now we'll start adding the limbs. Pucture a pair of holes in each side of the top of the rib jug. These holes will be used to tie on the shoulder blades. I did one of each set near the edge of the flat (bottom) part of the jug and the other maybe 1/2 inch away just going down the slop of the jug. Take the two handles (from rib and hip/pelvis jusgs) and trim them to equal sized oval looking shapes with the handle going across the long way. If you layed a ruler parallel to the handle the shoulder blade will measure about 4 3/4 inches (not a sticking point) .Using a paper punch put holes at each of the long ends. When you look at the skeleton as its hanging you will see the handles. Handle side up in the air. Visualize the handles still attached to the jug. The spout ends would be pointing away from the skeleton. Attach the shoulder blade to the two punture holes on the top of the rib cage via the one paper puch hole. I used fishing line for this attachement since it is pulled snug. You want it snug so the shoulder blade makes the arms hang away from the body. The other paper punch hole (spout end) will have the rest of the arm hanging from it.
So now we have a skeleton body with head, ribs, hips/pelvis, and shoulder blades. No arms are legs yet.

Take the remaining 4 jugs. Two of these handles will make the hands. The other two will be the feet. Both sets are made the same. Take your hand and lay it over the uncut jug. Handle pointing in the same direction as the fingers, heel of the hand at the spout. This is sort of a pattern for how you will cut the hands and feet. My pattern shows it as 8 1/2 inches the long way )parallel to the handle) but I found it easier to just cut and make it look like a long hand or foot. Sort of monster looking. Punch paper puch hole at the opposite end of the fingers/ toes where your hand heel had been.

Now take the remains of those 4 jugs and cut out 8 bones and 2 circles. The circles will be about 2 3/4 inches in diameter. These circles will be the knee caps. The bones will be about 7 3/4 inches in length and sort of shaped like stretched dog biscuits. Paper puch a two holes on each circle. Both on opposites ends of the diameter. Punch a hole on opposite ends of each of the 8 bones. Two holes per bone each at the long end were the bone flares out and rounds.

Using the lacing attach one bone to the end of the shoulder bone. Same with the other shoulder. Attach another bone to the end of the already attached bone. Same with the other side. You now have an arm on each side that is two bones lone and dangling from the shoulder blade. Attach a hand to each arm.

Pucture two holes to each side of the hip/pelvis jug bottom. To each of these hole sets attach a bone. I guess these bones are the femur? Attach the knee cap to the bottom of each of these femures. Then attach the last two bones to each knee cap. You now have two legs. Each has a bone then a knee cap then a bone. Attach a foot to each side.

My instructions suggest using glow in the dark dimensional paint to decorate. I did but won't again. The stuff peeled off to easily. I may try glow in the dark paints that aren't dimensional. They used lacing and curled it to make hair. One thing I did with great success was to thread minature plain white Christmas lights through the entire body. Looked great and after Halloween I had a couple of people knock on my door asking how to do this. Of course that was many years ago prior to them becoming more well known.

[arianna]

MM! Thank you Lynda. I printed the instructions out and will read them over and set things up for tomorrow. The boys thank you too! They really have the holiday spirit. I love the string light idea ! I'll let you know how we progress. ßß!

[arianna]

MM! Thanks again Lynda. Our skeleton looks great. I outlined each piece with a black sharpie. I still need to dig out the holiday lights, but it looks super and the boys love it. ßß!

[Diane]

It sounds really cute... I just might give it a try myself! Thanks!

Diane... :wave: