Things To Do – May 2008
Make Your Own Garden Skittles
You will need
- Empty plastic bottles
- Some paint
- Coloured sticky tape
- Ping-pong balls
- Play sand
Method
Whether you’re in your garden, at the beach or down the park, Skittles is great fun to play and easy to make. All you need are empty plastic bottles. Six or ten will do.
Peel off any labels on your collection of bottles, wash them and allow them to dry. You can simply decorate the bottles with coloured sticky tape or paint them in bright colours.
Emulsion or acrylic paint works well. Before painting, remember to ask a grown up to help you out and don’t forget to cover your clothes, just in case of spillages!
A way of being able to paint the entire bottle without touching it is to put a long stick inside the bottle and then start painting.
When you have finished, stand the stick inside a mug and leave to dry.
For professional looking tops on the skittles, you can use ping-pong balls. Another tricky shape to paint!
Carefully pierce the ball with a cocktail stick or wooden barbecue skewer, which you can hold while you paint. Again rest it in a mug until it’s dry.
The Skittles need to be weighted. You can use play sand to fill roughly a third of each bottle, but water would work just as well, if you replace the bottle top.
Glue the ping-pong ball on top and if you want to go the whole hog, add some coloured tape.
Keep score with a chalkboard, notebook or one of those wipe-clean memo pads
Arrange the skittles in the shape of a triangle and take turns to see how many you can knock down by rolling a ball at them.