Halloween Lanterns

Aah, hello fine people and welcome to my wonderful world of...ummm...well, I can't think of anything clever right now, so simply Welcome to my Wonderful World!

I feel a bit of pressure to make this post fantabulous, it being my FIRST POST and all - well, my first post on my new craft blog, I have another blog about my family as a way for family and friends (and whoever else) to keep up with us since we move often. But this is my first post here - at Mommy, Interrupted - so I'm striving to make it a good one.

My friend, Jessica, suggested I create such a blog, and I think she was on to something because this head of mine is constantly in information overload with all my wacky ideas and plans. So, now I have somewhere I can let it all (well...some of it) out at. 

I figured this first fantabulous post would be a quick tutorial on how to make the  Halloween lanterns I posted a picture of in my other blog, Thursday Afternoon. My inspiration for these actually came from some Christmas luminaries (I don't remember the site - sorry!), but I knew with a few tweaks I could make 'em into a big hit in my house (and I was right, my kiddos LOVE these). 

Had I known I was going to do a mini tutorial at the time we made these I would've taken more pictures of the entire lantern making process. 

Okay, here's what you need:

Mod Podge (Glossy)

Foam (or paint) brush

Black construction paper (or vinyl)

Tissue paper 

Jars (any size, I like how it looks with a variety of sizes rather than all of them being the same height)

You can buy mason jars or any other kind of jar at many stores, but I like to be thrifty when I can so I just saved jars once I used them. For instance, when we had fettucini for dinner I saved the alfredo sauce jar to use for this project. I have three guys in my house that eat like a pack of hungry wolves so it didn't take long to collect the amount of jars I needed. 

Wash your jars and make sure they are dry. 

Decide what color you want your lantern to be and cut strips of tissue paper. My strips were about an inch or two in width. 

With a brush, paint a strip of mod podge onto the jar. Lay the tissue paper down on top of the strip of mod podge you just painted. Make sure it's as smooth as possible. 

Next, brush a light coat of Mod Podge over the tissue paper once it's on the jar. Repeat this until your jar is covered, slightly overlapping each tissue paper strip. 

I looked up some Jack-O-Lantern faces online and just free-handed them onto black construction paper and cut them out. Then we glued them on the jar with mod podge and did a coat of mod podge over top of the construction paper also in order to seal it AND make the whole thing look glossy. 

Let it dry, et voilà! Adorable Halloween decorations! 

They even look super cute during the day with the sunshine shining through!

And at night, just stick a tealight in them and you've got some super cool, glowing decor happenin'. I used a strand of lights in mine because I go through tealights like no other and figured I'd save money by using LED lights which last FOREVER. You could even use the little battery powered tealights too if you have younger kids that you don't trust around lit candles, or a crazy kitty who jumps in window sills (luckily ours only gets in the living room window sill).

Hope you all enjoy making (and admiring) these as much as we did!

XO,

LORRI