I've got a friends birthday coming up, and we've all been stuck for ideas - they live on a caravan site so it either has to be a small gathering there, a surprise inside venue or a beach or something; and its real, real cold and quickly dark this time of year... What I'm hoping to do is get a few lanterns made up produced from either fabric, paper, or other cheap products - i've got a couple ideas that would incorporate glass jars and tins, but i don't have any glass jars or tins! If you've got any ideas it would be great to hear from you
hmmm......not sure if this would help you, depends on what you can get for supplies, but i once made a cool hanging lanter out of some chicken wire, tissue paper and glue. you just take the wire (chicken wire, screen, fencing, or whatever you've got) and mold it into a cool shape. i made a big cylinder. then take one piece of tissue paper and wrap it around the shape and tape it so it stays on. this is just your base layer. then cut out sqaures of different colored tissue paper. you should have a little bucket of some elmers glue mixed with water to make it kinda runny. dip your squares of paper into the glue then smooth them onto the screen where the base layer of paper is. as you cover it with the squares, they just kind of mesh and dry onto the wire. you need to do to do maybe one or two layers of squares over the base layer of paper. once it dries, you have this stiff paper over the screen and when you turn on a bulb inside, it looks like stained glass. they're really cool looking. i don't know if these instruction make much sense, i wish i had a picture to show you. but i made one for my sister for her birthday a few years ago and she loves it.
oooo.....i just thought of another one that would be really cheap. ice lights!!! these things are wicked cool. i don't know how cold it is where you are, but i suppose you could make small ones in your freezer. basically, you take one large container and put water in it, then a second slightly smaller container with a little water to hold it down, then set it out to freeze. so, you know, the frozen water is your candle holder basically. i've even seen ones people made that they put flower petals and stuff in the water so they'd show through the ice. i just don't know how you'd get the ice chunk out whole without breaking it or the container. i guess if you used cheap plastic cups you could just cut them away once it freezes. i don't know.......i must try this sometime. anyway, don't know if this is the kind of thing you're looking for, but they are quite awesome looking.
