We celebrated last night, one day early, as kids would need to go to bed early tonight as they have school the following day. During the day, we decided to make our own lanterns for the celebrations. We had some leftover expandable plastic tubing (7" diameter) from when we did our home renovations years ago and had our kitchen hood fitted. We cut them into 8" lengths each to make a lantern each for the kids. This tubing was perfect for lanterns as it is translucent (for the candle light to shine through) and also holds its shape well so no further reinforcement is needed.
The kids decided what design they wanted on their lanterns and us parents helped them sketch it on the lanterns with marker pen. Then the kids painted the drawings with craft paint and after the paint has dried, Hubby put on the base as well as made a handle for them. Not bad for a handmade lantern at all, and one of a kind ;) Well done kids!
We had a mooncake party at home before our lantern session, which had to be done indoors due to the bad haze in KL! Kids were super excited to parade around the living room with their handmade lanterns.
Handmade Lanterns for Mid-Autumn Festival
What you will need:
7" Expandable plastic tubing (translucent)
Wire mesh (for base)
String
Craft Paint
Brush
Marker pen
1. Cut about 8" length of tubing with scissors. Decide with your kids what design they would like on their lanterns, and help them sketch it out using the marker pen.
2. Using craft paint, your kids can paint the designs with minimal supervision. Allow to dry.
3. If your child wants to, you can do another design on the other side of the lantern. Baby D picked Minion as well as Pingu for his lantern.
4. Allow paint to dry. Once dry, make 4 small holes about 1.5cm from the base. We used wire mesh as the base (but you can use anything else u have at home) then using string, string the base to the lantern.
5. At the top, you can also make 2 holes using scissors, then string to make 2 handles which you can hang off a stick later on. Use tealight candles to light up the lanterns. Have fun!
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Lovely! Great way to preserve the cultural tradition and heritage.
ReplyDeleteAww those lanterns are so adorable!! I can't believe how well they came out! :D
ReplyDeletethose are really cute and cool lanterns! nice designs ... and it brings back happy memories of my own, of playing with lanterns when i was a kid! :)
ReplyDeleteCan put candle in it? Won't melt the plastic?
ReplyDelete