You know when you have an idea for a craft that you think will turn out super cute and then, well, it doesn’t?
I bring you, my lantern craft.
Actually, it still turned out pretty, just not as I had intended. But I’m jumping ahead a little.
We have been invited to participate in a St. Martin’s Lantern Walk at our local Waldorf school. The description of the event sounds so lovely that I am incredibly excited about it. I mean the boys. The boys are incredibly excited about it.
The only issue (and it should not be an issue) is that we needed to make a lantern to bring along.
In my mind this event is going to be breathtaking. And I know that most of the children are creating their lanterns at the Waldorf school, so I am quite confident that those lanterns will be stunning.
We are more of a ‘process art’ family, really, and so I thought and thought about how to make pretty lanterns.
We finally decided to just do the classic tissue paper on the mason jar style. You really can’t go to far wrong with that.
BUT THEN …
I got an idea.
What if I used hot glue to create a pretty snowflake first? Then we could cover the jar with white and light blue tissue paper and it would look so pretty!
Nope. Didn’t work. Once the tissue paper was added we couldn’t see the snowflake at all.
Oh well, no big deal. The lantern was still covered in the tissue paper and would work just fine.
BUT THEN … (Goodness I am feeling rather dramatic)
Sammy had a great idea! He thought if we painted the jar we would still be able to see the snowflake. We tried at first with watercolour paint, but it wouldn’t stick to the glass jar, so we ended up using acrylic paint. It worked and looks quite pretty. I do wish I had thinned out the paint first though.
We added a pinch of glitter (which is really not Waldorf-ish at all but looks sparkly) and called it a night.
Regardless of the lantern itself I am sure this lantern walk will be gorgeous. Throw in the campfire, guitar songs, and homemade vegetable soup after and I will be in my glory.
Seriously – I will need someone to pinch me.
I hope you have something you are looking forward to this week as well friends. I will try hard to share a picture of the lantern walk on Instagram this week – it’s my newest venture I’m trying. Please follow along with me there too!
Thank you so much for reading, I’ll be back tomorrow.
Love this idea
How did you attach the string/handle? Did you use a tea light to light up the lantern? I may do this in January for my family program. Thank you.
Great question! I simply knotted the string around the top of the jar. We used a tea light, though a battery operated candle/tea light would work as well.