However, it's my half term this week, and it's almost Halloween! Halloween is definitely my favourite event of the year, after Christmas, of course. Unfortunately, this year I don't have any plans, and Halloween is on a Monday, when I go back to school. Ugh!
Anyway, I decided I'd still celebrate it at home, and decorate my room a little. As I have absolutely no money whatsoever, I've been making my decorations, and thought I might post a step by step guide on everything that I make.
Today I made some paper Chinese Lanterns (Note: These lanterns are paper replicas of real chinese lanterns, and cannot be lit, so don't even try. I don't wanna be responsible for any accidents!) and now my floor is covered in glitter. Hooray!
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| Uuugh, horrible quality camera, I am sorry! |
So, let's begin shall we? To make one, you will need:
A few sheets of A4 card, in the colour of your choice
A ruler
A pencil
Scissors
Glue
Tape
Felt tip pens
Glitter (it's optional, but I love the stuff!)
And a workspace that you don't mind getting completely messy. xD
Step 1. Depending on how large you want your lanterns to be, you can either cut the A4 sheet in half to make A5 card, which makes much smaller and cuter lanterns, in my opinion, or you can stick to the regular A4 size and make bigger ones.
Once you've decided how big you want your lanterns to be, fold the card in half lengthways like so.
Step 2. Now is the best bit. Decorate your lanterns with whatever you like. I used a black felt tip pen to draw little black bat silhouettes and stars on, and then put glitter around the top and bottom edges, but you can decorate them however you like.
Step 3. While the card is folded, cut straight lines from the fold upwards, but do NOT cut all the way to the top. If you want your lanterns to be particularly organised, you can measure and draw on some guidelines with a ruler like I did, but again, it's optional. If you're feeling particularly dangerous, why not cut a wavy lane, or a zigzag and see how that turns out?
Step 3. You should now have something like this! This is the point where you can add some more detail, if you wish, or rub out any pencil guidelines you left behind.
Step 4. Take each side of the card and roll it around on itself to make a cylinder, like so. Stick the two edges together using glue or tape. (I used double sided tape, I find it holds better, but regular cello-tape works fine.)
Step 5. Push the two ends of the cylinder towards each other, so the slits in the card spread out. You should have something looking like this.
Step 6. Now to make a handle. Cut a a long, fairly thin strip of card in a matching colour.
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| Oh god, the glitter! |
Stick one end of the strip on the inside of the lantern. Bend the strip over so that it reaches the other side, and stick it down there too.
Step 7. You should now have a lovely paper lantern! The only thing left to do is hang it up somewhere. You may want to make a few, as I did, and string them across a room, or you could even attatch them to a stick of wood, and use them as part of a witch costume. You can probably think of tonnes of other ideas.
If anyone makes any of these, please link me a picture in the comments, I'd love to see how other people's turned out. I hope you all have a lovely Tuesday, and a great Halloween!
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