How to make a rocketpack — Camp Bestival 2016

So I’ve mentioned that next month we’re off to Camp Bestival.

Now any Bestival/Camp Bestival aficionado will tell you that one of the best things about the festivals each year is the hotly anticipated theme and this year it’s Outer Space.

Some revellers take this very seriously indeed. Others give a little nod to it (and will don a hat or a jaunty pair of shades) whilst others — sadly — don’t bother and just turn up in their street clothes.

Which is a shame, I think.

After all, how often do you get the opportunity to dress as your favourite comic-book character, cover yourself in glitter — or wear a mirror-ball on your head — without being whisked away (either by the police or the men in white coats)?

At festivals, anything goes.

Want to wear a Limahl wig and a ball-gown? Go for it.

Ever been filled with the desire to paint your face red and dress as a tomato? Then a festival is the perfect place to action this whim.

The themes are a great prompt and it’s lovely to see people in their fancy dress finery. Some families even decorate their trolleys. A couple of years ago, the theme at Shambala was Under The Sea and we went as jellyfish and decorated the boys’ trolley with netting and sea-creatures.

But back to this year. We’ve already sorted our costumes and we’re cheating slightly because Shambala ran with the space theme last year, so we already have a head start. The boys have some cute little astronaut outfits and last year we made them some rocketpacks to wear. They were a little worse for wear after the festival so we’ll make some more for Camp Bestival

To make a rocketpack you will need:

• • 2 plastic bottles of the same kind
  • 2 plastic drinking cups
  • A shoe box and some random bits of stiff cardboard (loo roll inners etc)
  • Some drinking straws
  • Felt in red, yellow and orange
  • Glue (I used my trusty glue-gun)
  • Spray-paint — we used grey
  • Glitter
  • Something to use as ‘buttons’ — we used a few mini mirror-tiles
  • Thick elastic — to make shoulder straps

Place your bottles side by side and glue them together, where they join.

Then cut a hole in the bottom of each plastic cup and poke the ends of the bottles through — gluing round the join so they’re securely fixed together.

To create the main body of the rocketpack, we used one man’s shoe-box — cut in half — to create a rocketpack for both of the boys.

If you’re using a smaller box, just make absolutely sure that your two plastic bottles fit side by side within the box. Then cut one of the long sides out of the shoe-box totally, so that the bottles will be able to come through.

This will act as the base of the rocketpack and — later down the line — you’ll be able to fit your bottle ‘boosters’ up inside the box.

Put the base of the shoe box to one side for now, then glue on some ‘fuel-tubing’ to the lid, using the drinking straws.

We also made a ‘control panel’ from another square piece of card and added half section of loo-roll tube to the shoe-box lid, to give a bit of interest and make our rocket-pack a little bit more three dimensional.

Next cut out some flame shapes out of your coloured felt.

We made three pieces for each ‘rocket-booster’ and glued them together, to look like one big flame.

When the glue has dried — and everything feels secure — give it a coat of spray paint.

We didn’t spray the base of the shoe-box — because it happened to have an amazing silver mirror-finish, which was perfect as it was — but we sprayed the shoe-box lid, plus the cups and bottles, using a dark, gunmetal grey shade.

If the shoebox base hadn’t already been silver, we would have sprayed that too.

Before the paint dried on the shoe box lid, I liberally applied some glitter!!

This isn’t strictly necessary but hey. Everyone loves a bit of sparkle don’t they? A craft project wouldn’t be the same without glitter.

It stuck really well to the wet paint and gave a really good sparkly finish.

When the spray-painted bottles and cups were dry, we glued the felt ‘flames’ to the inside rim of the cups. When you turn them upside down, they dangle down and look really cool!

Glue the shoebox lid, back on to it’s base and stick some ‘buttons’ on to your control panel — we used mirror tiles and felt squares.

Finally, glue the bottle and cup ‘boosters’ inside the shoe-box, by pushing them through the open side that you cut away to begin with.

And that’s it. Leave it to dry.

Ta-Daaah! One rocket-pack! Perfect for budding Cosmonauts.

We glued some loops — using 10mm wide elastic — to the back of the rocketpack, for the boys to slip over their shoulders.  If you were particularly handy, you could loop them through the shoe-box to give a little bit more stability.

Team with a NASA inspired costume and you’re good to go. We got ours off Amazon — cheap as chips — and they looked fab :)

The boys loved their outfits and were absolutely ‘over the moon’ (do you see what I did there?) with their rocketpacks! I’d like to say that they lasted well but the straws fell off after half an hour and they lost the flames after two.

Still — they were simple to make and we can easily create some more for Camp Bestival.

And that’s it — how to make a rocketpack for your budding astronauts. Tim Peake better be careful, there’s a new (space)man in town!

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Tickets for this year’s Camp Bestival 2016 (July 28th to 31st) are now on sale.

Do pop along and check out their website — click  here for info on ticket options and pricing — you won’t regret it!

The Listed Home are proud to be official bloggers for Camp Bestival this year but all thoughts, words and images — as ever — are entirely my own.