Rainbow Lantern

To light up up our St.Patty's day celebration we decided to try our hand at creating a bright rainbow lantern. I have never done paper mache and as we were creating it I had my doubts it would all hold up once it was dry. I was happy to see that that it worked and that the process left us with a lovely lantern!

To create you will need

rainbow tissue paper

glue

balloon (we used a punching balloon for an extra large lantern)

paint brush

scissors 

battery operated tea light (or real tea light in a small pie plate)

To begin, cut your tissue paper colors into strips and then into squares.

Cover your work area with protection (this is going to get messy!)

Blow up your balloon.

Secure your balloon into a stand (a bowl or a strip of cardboard taped together to form a circle...) so that you don't have to hold your balloon up as you work. 

Mix your glue with water (with the ratio 4:1 ~ 4 parts glue, 1 part water).

Paint a strip of glue around the top of your balloon and place a layer of squares on top of the glue. Then cover the strip of squares in glue once again. Continue going around the same strip of color until you have three layers.

Keep going all the way down your balloon in strips, following the colors of the rainbow.

Tie a string around the top and hang to dry for 24 hours. 

Pop your balloon and pull out the pieces.

Add your candle....

and enjoy!

With warmth,