I’m going to assume that you read my earlier post “How to Make Paper Lanterns – Or Not“.  If, somehow, you missed it, I can summarize it by saying: You can buy very inexpensive lanterns from Luna Bazaar, or you can spend your money on supplies, spend time cutting and pasting or stapling the lanterns, and end up with lanterns that don’t look nearly as good as what you can buy. You decide.

Having said that, there are many DIY Paper Lanterns that are really worth your time and effort. One good idea is to take a plain paper lantern and dress it up.

Very inexpensive, 10-inch, “No Frills” paper lanterns from Luna Bazaar are the best deal around – and a perfect place to start. See No Frills Paper Lanterns in our online store.

Martha Stewart has a few DIY Paper Lanterns that involve decorating the lantern with butterflies, polka-dots, circles, and other colorful accents. This concept can help you tie the lanterns in to the theme of your event.

DIY Paper Lanterns
Pre-cut paper circles are taped onto a plain paper lantern.
From: Martha Stewart.

Use double-sided tape to stick the paper circles onto the plain lantern. Start taping at the bottom. You can take two colors from your event color palette and create a striped or checkered effect. The pre-cut circles are available at Hygloss arts and crafts site.

An interesting, eco-friendly variation on this idea is from Zipper8Lighting on Etsy

Eco-friendly newspaper-embellished paper lantern!
Artichoke Phone Book Pendant Lantern

Instead of buying paper circles, Zipper8 cut circles out of old telephone books.

Ribbons and DIY Paper Lanterns go well together! Some nice examples are shown below. Cut the lengths of ribbon depending on the size of the paper lantern and
the length of the streamers. You can use 8 lengths of ribbon, but 5 or 6
would also look fine. Lion Ribbon was recommended as a source for the ribbon on Wedding by Color.

Ribbon-bedecked DIY Paper Lanterns
as seen on brides.com

Another idea from Martha Stewart is to cut out paper butterflies and attach them to a plain paper lantern with double-sided tape or glue dots. Birds or flowers can be attached instead of butterflies.

DIY Paper Lanterns: Plain lanterns dressed up with paper butterfly cut-outs.
Martha Stewart Living

Of course, you can use any color as the base for your DIY Paper Lanterns. Use our exclusive color “Ice Blue“as a base for white bird or butterfly cut-outs. For the biggest selection of paper lantern colors for your DIY Paper Lanterns check out the colors at Luna Bazaar!

Note: you can now see our expanded collection of DIY lantern projects on our Luna Bazaar Pinterest board!
Dorothy
6/27/12