DIY Chinese Traditional Lanterns 制作中秋节传统灯笼

The girls' school has a lantern making competition, and being the sporting parents that we are, we decided to join in by making traditional lanterns.

After googling, checking out a friend's father's DIY lanterns photos on FB, buying the materials (i.e. cellophane paper, craft wire), our dining area was turned into a work shop. The hubs and I did the wire shaping, the girls drew and cut out the designs they wanted to stick on the lanterns, and I glued on the cellophane paper. The whole of last weekend was spent on this.







Zara wanted a rabbit shaped lantern, while Zaria who didn't really care had a cuboctahedron shaped lantern just because we had a frame from an old lantern to follow.






I wasn't good at smoothing out the cellophane paper. Sunning it didn't work, and I was told I should blow it with a hot hair dryer after gluing on to smoothen it. Maybe next year.

But at least it's functional!




After all the gluing was done I hung it to dry, the evening sun actually casted a beautiful shadow of the lantern on the ground.


In the night we tried lighting them up, and the girls were pretty happy with the results.




Did we win? The results will be out coming Friday, but it's unlikely that we will as I'd seen the ones submitted by the others, and they were way more creative, or beautifully done than ours. Oh well, at least we did try.

Happy Mid Autumn Festival Everyone!