Planet Paper Lanterns: A Partial Tutorial

Hello All!  Have you noticed a steady decline in the amount I'm posting?  The broken ankle is really keeping me from a lot of creative endeavors.  It's annoying but only a week and a half more with my cast on.  Yay!  I'm ready because it's getting really frustrating being stuck at home on the couch.

HOWEVER, I do have a project to share today (yayayayayayaya).  I'm working on a project for my church for our kids Halloween party.  The theme this year is outer space so I'm helping to make some planet decorations.  Let me show you what I'm doing so far!

Planet number 1: Swirly Green Awesomeness

Start with a plain paper lantern.  Mine was light green so I am going to be accenting it with dark green.

Lay it flat.  Use watercolor paint to draw swirls all around the lantern (I used blue and green).  By doing this on the flattened lantern, you will end up with circular accents when you open it up.  Do this to both sides.

Now open it up.  See your swirls?  Next, we're going to accent it with tissue paper.  Rip up lots of irregular pieces of tissue paper.  The raggedier the better. 

Use Mod Podge to adhere the tissue paper all around the lantern.  I kept these closer to the middle to give it some visual interest.  I also crumpled the tissue paper a little before attaching it to give it dimension. 

Finally, I mixed up a little glitter glue by combining Mod Podge with loose glitter.  I used a small paint brush to add even more streaks across the planet.  That's it!  I can't wait to see it hung up in action.

Planet number 2: Dark Blue Giant -I am missing the proper inner wire for this one, so you will have to wait in suspense to see it all opened up :)

This lantern was dark blue so I used a different technique to decorate it.  Once again, I started by decorating it flat.  This time, I used a mix of acrylic paint to sponge on texture.  The acrylic showed up better on the dark paper.  I used a mix of white, black, and blue.  When you open it up, it gets the same rings of texture like in the green one.

To accent it, I also made a ring of stars to go around it.  I made a garland of silver stars that is the same circumference as the lantern.  When the lantern is opened, the garland will stay in place and can be adjusted to the position you want.

Once I get the appropriate hanger, I'll show this guy all opened up.  You'll just have to wait in suspense until then...