How To Make Cute Cardboard Lanterns

What you need:

• Old toilet rolls or paper towel rolls cut to a similar size
• Scissors
• Glue gun or tape
• Paper glue/glue stick
• Scalpel/exacto knife/really sharp knife
• Tea light candles
• Pretty paper
• White paint

So the first step is to cover your cardboard roll in pretty paper using the glue stick. Unfortunately this made it really hard to see what I was doing in the photos so I will use a plain roll so you can see things clearly then show the finished paper covered product.

So glue the paper securely all over and wrap it around like this. I used an old envelope ^_^

Ok once your paper is secure and dry it’s time to make the lantern! You can see from where I’ve drawn in pen below where you should cut. The line in the middle is where we will start making the cuts then the two dots are to mark where will eventually put little slits.

Use your scalpel to make a cut along the first line! Please be very very very careful when using a knife like this!

Now continue around the tube making more cuts parallel to the first one around 1cm apart. Keep going until you reach where you started.

Now make small snips around both ends around 1cm long, you should have something like this:

Next it’s time to fan the whole thing out. Gently push around the middle from the inside.

Keep pushing and use the ends to smoosh it together…

Once you push it out you should be able to create a fold and have something like this:

Now at one end fold all of the little tabbed pieces outwards 😀

Taadaa!

On the other end, fold all the little tabs inwards:

Use your glue gun or tape to hold them all in place. This is going to form the base which prevents the tea light candle from just falling out the bottom haha XD

So from the side it looks like this…

And this is what it looks like with the paper. Mine looks pretty dodgy because I was originally planning on painting it so I didn’t think to the the paper on until after it was made >_<

If your roll has brand names printed on the inside you can use the white paint to go over them. In fact you could paint it any colour you like! I didn’t bother doing it completely because this was a test run.

Now pop the tea light candle through the top opening…

And you’ve got a lantern!

Obviously you should be careful when lighting it as it is made of completely flamable materials but they make very pretty decorations and I can imagine hundreds of them strung up to my roof would look AWESOME!