Step by step

Step 1

Using hot glue, stick a cocktail stick in the middle of the long edge of the foam sheet with about a third over the edge. Tightly fold the sheet into a cone shape, securing with staples and hot glue. Stick the cone into the polystyrene ball using the cocktail stick.

Step 3

Fill the cone with cotton wool or wadding, then glue a long strip of cotton wool around the edge, continuing inwards in a spiral pattern. Then gently pull, tease and twist all the edges to form an irregular dust tail shape. Use hairspray to hold the strands in place.

Step 5

Twist together the two pipe cleaners with a length of craft wire to form the ion tail. Leave a short length of wire at one end which you can fix into the polystyrene ball. Make sure that you stick the ion tail into the nucleus/coma at a different angle to the dust tail.

Step 2

Cover the ball with cotton wool to form the coma and then cover the entire foam sheet with cotton wool or wadding using waterbased glue. Tear the ends off rather than cutting them so the end of the tail has an uneven edge.

Step 4

Remove the tail, then paint the outside of the nucleus (or coma) pale green using a water-based paint. This recreates the classic green colour of the coma around a comet’s nucleus. Leave this to dry. Once dry, re-attach the tail.

Step 6

Make two holes about 8cm apart in the box lid. Paint two wooden skewers black and trim the blunt ends. One skewer needs to be 17cm, the other 22cm. Push the blunt ends through the box holes, then push the pointed ends through the nucleus and tail.