(888) 435-4336 | Mon-Fri, 8am-8pm ET
Love creative and crafty projects? Planning a wedding or event? Try these elegant (and easy) paper lantern DIY hacks and redesigns to bring something unique and different to your decor. Whether you love ultra modern shaggy or prefer the whimsical and flowery, read on to discover how you turn a paper lantern into art. Your guests will be saying “wow” in no time!
Let’s start with fun and flowery ideas. Here are 3 ways to spruce up your lantern by adding flowers. 1. Cover a diagonal section of the lantern in order to create a spiral sense of drama. 2. Cover the entire lantern with card or crepe paper flowers. Use a flower punch to punch out uniform blooms from cardstock or old book pages. Another tactic is to roll crepe paper into roses. The possibilities for flower making are endless! Simply create the flowers to your liking, glue to the lantern, and voila, a floral lantern customized to your tastes. 3. Lastly, consider buying mesh fabric with rosettes already on the fabric, and then glue the fabric to the lantern.
If flowers aren’t your thing, how about fluffy? Make a snowball-style lantern by crumpling coffee filters and gluing them to the lantern. You go from ordinary to modern design, and it’s so inexpensive to do!
We love this idea for a beach-themed paper lantern. Use a circle punch, cut out 200 circles using 110# paper to cover a 14 inch lantern. Place the circles in buckets of dye based on your color preferences. Lay them out to dry. Melt paraffin wax in a double boiler (crock pot + extra bowl). Add mineral oil to thin the wax. Dip each circle into the wax (leave a top portion clear). Lay it out to dry. The wax gives the paper rigidity and makes it more translucent to let the light through. Use a glue gun to attach the circles from the bottom up.
Transform paper lanterns into shaggy modern light sculptures with this easy DIY hack. First, cut long pendant shapes from paper. Then, starting from the bottom, tape or glue the paper to the wire spirals of the lantern using a checkered or windowed pattern so that the paper pendants are offset from one another as each layer is built. You can also use magazine or colored paper for more variation.
Another fun and inexpensive DIY hack: redesign a paper lantern using cupcake liners. Use both plain white standard cupcake liners and smaller decorative liners. Glue the plain cupcake liners where the centers are an inch apart to allow them to begin to crowd each other. Then glue the smaller decorative liners in the center of the larger cups, creating the double ruffled look. Completely cover the lantern with the liners and enjoy your ruffle creation.
Create a hot air balloon as a centerpiece or as a floating wonder. Glue satin ribbon on the lantern to create the vertical lines of the balloon. Get a small basket to serve as the hot air balloon basket, and wrap it with tulle. Tie the basket to the balloon-lantern with string if you plan to hang it. To use a centerpiece, glue wooden dowels for the strings to enable it to stand upright. Put bows to cover where the dowels attach to your hot air balloon creation.
And, one final awesome idea: make clouds from the lanterns! With some polyester stuffing, fishing line, and a hot glue gun, you can create a multitude of ethereal clouds with small, medium, and large paper lanterns.
Put your DIY hat on and your creative muse to work with these fun DIY hacks and redesigns. Have fun, and don’t forget to add LED lights to make each one that much more magical.
