Make a Paper Lantern

We have two seasonal 'makes' for you as we are currently embracing Halloween! Amelie is bonkers for it this year - VERY excited, loving the opportunity to dress up, bake themed cakes, carve pumpkins and going 'Trick or Treating' with her friends.

Our patch appears to be more festive at Halloween than at Christmas! It's not unusual for neighbours in most streets to get competitive at Christmas, decorating the outside of their homes in red & green neons and animatronic reindeer. However, at this spooky time of year nearly all of our neighbours dress up the front of their homes with cobwebs and skeletons, light their creatively carved pumpkins in their front gardens and welcome kids and their swag bags. SUGAR FEAST!!! There's quite a party atmosphere with one particular neighbour pulling out all the stops and pumping our spooky tunes from speakers. Christmas on our street is a much more low key affair with just a few fairy lights twinkling on the trees placed in the bay windows. Much more calm and cosy compared to the giddy squeals of children running from door to door shouting "TRICK OR TREAT" as winter takes hold.

To add to our Halloween decorations bought from the finest of purveyors including Poundland & the 99p Store (they do have some great tack), we have made our own Halloween Lanterns.

Our Halloween Paper Lanterns

Time taken for us to make: 45mins

Cost to make: £1.50 - for new glitter pens, we already had paper.

Original Instructions

What we used:

• Glue 
• Coloured paper (A4 size)
• Scissors - We used different types of pinking shears
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Glitter pens

What we did: 

We started by making the handles for our lanterns. Using a ruler we drew lines the width of the ruler and cut along the pencil marks with scissors. 

Draw lines the width of a ruler apart

Cut along the pencil lines with scissors

We then folded a sheet of paper in half, length ways, then marked one edge with a 'stop line' to guide Amelie when to stop cutting as we needed to to snip strips upwards from the fold but not right through.

Fold paper in half, length ways

Draw a 'Stop Line' to mark where to stop cutting on the outside edge. 

Cut strips from the fold upwards to the 'Stop Line'

Now we can decorate! Opening out the paper we then used glitter glue to make patterns on the strips. Once that was complete we glued along one outer edge of a short end to attach the other end making a cylinder. Once the cylinder was complete we glued on the handle.

Decorate the strips 

Glue along on short edge

Stick edge to other end to make a cylinder 

Glue the handle to the top

We now have a some beautiful halloweeny lanterns to decorate our home.