TUTORIAL: DIY Balloon Tie Fighters

Got a little Jedi at home?
We've got one too, we do.

And for his birthday a while ago I came up with an easy way to make those awesome dual winged fighting ships from Star Wars...or, Tie Fighters!
....at least that's what I hoped they looked like.  I hung them up and waited for Owen's reaction when he came from school.  
"Tie Fighters! Cool!"
And then he schooled me on the difference between black tie fighters and grayish/silver ones, and bent wings vs. straight wings.  Apparently I'd made a bunch of Darth Vader ships.
Whoops.

If you're more of a Rebel Alliance kind of crafter, just replace these instructions with gray materials, and let's make:

For one ship you need:
• 4 pipe cleaners
• 1 balloon
• 2 pieces of cardstock (construction paper can be used also but cardstock will hold shape better)
• tape

And you've got two wings, with a fold in the middle:

Now let's make the body, wing connectors, and put it all together:
• Blow up a balloon and keep it on the small side.  Tie a knot and set it aside.
• Take two pipe cleaners and twist them together at the ends to create one extra long pipecleaner.  Do the same thing with the other two pipe cleaners.  And now you have two long wing connectors.
• Take the first connector and wrap around the middle of the balloon.  Twist the ends together on the other side so the pipecleaners are snug around the balloon and won't fall off.  Then twist the ends together so they look like one fused pipecleaner. 

• Take the other wing connector and wrap it around the balloon as we did above, but wrap it from the other side.  You should have two pipecleaner connectors sticking out from the sides of the balloon.
• Bend the ends of the connectors down at a 90 degree angle.
• Tape the pipecleaner ends to the wings, at the fold in the paper.  Black tape is ideal.  But I don't have any so I just used transparent Scotch tape.

Then tie a yarn string around the top, tape it to the ceiling with Scotch tape....and your Tie Fighter is ready for battle!

This is gonna get ugly.

 May the force be with you.