PAPER PARTY LANTERNS

We hit a big milestone last month. Bou turned two! So needles to say there was a lot of party planning that went on for our indoor birthday picnic, which would not have been complete without these paper party lanterns strung up around the house to help bring some outside summer vibes, inside! I found some super-bright rainbow paper at our local stationary shop which inspired my party palette scheme and theme. A little bit tropical and oh-so colourful! I loved how easy and inexpensive these were to make and how much character handcrafted decorations bring to any celebration – these would be great for birthdays, BBQ’s, picnic partys, summer fayres and fetes plus so much more.
If you try-out a tutorial don’t forget to tag me @jazzdominoholly on IG, FB or Twitter and let me know how it turned out!
You Will Need:
A4 Paper
Scissors
Glue Stick
Stapler
String for hanging
HOW – TO
Gather together your supplies as listed above. Easy-peasey!
You will need two pieces of contrasting coloured paper for every lantern. Choose one colour for the exterior of the lantern and the other for the interior.
Fold and crease the outside paper in half lengthwise with the right side of the paper facing outwards.
Take your scissors and make a series of even-sized parallel snips cutting through the folded side of the paper and leaving approx 1 cm uncut along the lengthwise open edge.
Once you’ve finished cutting the paper, open it out and it should look like this! Et Voila!
Now turn it wrong side over and use your glue stick to cover the last interior widthwise ends of paper in adhesive.
Bring the two widthwise ends of the paper around to meet, creating the lantern shape, like so…
Overlap the widthwise ends of the paper together, sticking down and smoothing into place with your fingers.
Now move on to the inside piece of contrasting paper. Bring the two widthwise ends together and overlap to create a tube to fit inside of the lantern.
Pop the tube of contrasting paper into the lantern and staple it into place along the top edge. It will be a little longer than the outer shade – leave the extra overhanging for the moment…
Now turn it over and staple the inside paper to the outside as before.
Next lets deal with that little paper overhang. Trim it off into one long continuous strip – this strip of paper will now become the lantern handle. Clever, huh?!
Staple the paper strip to the top of the lantern.
And this is what your finished paper party lantern should look like…TA-DA!
Now make a bunch of them and hang ’em up with string and you’re ready to p-ar-tay!