Chinese New Year Lantern Ideas

I have to give a shout-out to my adoptive blogging friend Cindy who did a fantastic job making Chinese New Year Lanterns out of red envelopes.

You can find detailed instructions here on her blog.

You can find red envelopes at Party City and Pier 1 right now. Construction paper lanterns can be found here on my blog. Josie has even been able to help me with this craft the last two years.

Simple instructions for making paper lanterns out of Styrofoam cups found here on Family Corner.

My favorite lantern is this glass lantern made of recycled glass jars, red tissue paper, stickers and other embellishments.

This craft was featured several years ago on my blog here and I decided it was time to add another one to our collection with Miss Josie's help.

Supplies needed for this craft include:

Empty glass jars (with the labels soaked off)
red tissue paper
scissors
glue
brushes
(glitter, ribbon..etc) for embellishments

Step 1. Gather up some empty glass jars (here's a good excuse to clean out the refrigerator) and let them soak in hot water to remove their labels.

Step 2. Make a simple solution of white glue and water, using equal parts of each. I poured our glue solution in a plastic bowl for Josie.

Step 3. Cut up a bowl full of one-inch squares of red tissue paper (the size isn't that important). You could even tear up your tissue pieces for a more custom look. Set aside your tissue paper.

Step 4. Using a brush, paint the sides of the jar with the glue solution.

Step 5. Paste one layer of red tissue onto the jar.


Step 6. We then covered the tissue with another coat of glue and set the jar aside to dry. We put Josie's jar in front of a fan to speed up the process. It took less than 30 minutes to dry.

Step 7. Decorate your jar with glitter, stickers, gold wire, ribbon or whatever you can find. Josie used LOTS and LOTS of CNY stickers that I picked up from Party City.

I then covered the jar with one more layer of glue to adhere the stickers to the tissue paper and we set the jar back in front of the fan for more dry time.

Happy Crafting!

Happy soon-to-be Chinese New Year!