Monday, December 17, 2012

Christmas lantern from recycled items

Zskya, our church mate and a K5 student of Batangas National Highschool came to me and asked if she and her classmates can use the church hall because they needed a space to make a Christmas lantern.  I learned that every class from K5 to 4thyear are to submit a lantern as part of their project.  It is also a school competition - the lantern should be made out of recycled materials - therefore it should not cost much that's the major criteria for judging. They started covering their star shaped lantern with old magazines.  Their original plan was to use tahong shells to decor their lantern project.  Unfortunately, the assigned person to bring the shells couldn't come.  Zsyka came at our house and consulted me of what's the best thing to do with the lantern.



Not brag about myself, they have done the right decision of coming to our place.  Since I have been aware of waste segregation, there are a lot of useful stuffs at our house that they can use. I have been making craft projects out of recycled materials too.  So, I let these students get their materials in our bodega.  We have boxes, tin caps from soda bottles, plastic cups, old newspapers, magazines and diaper wrappers.  We keep these items and sell them to junk shop.

Corrugated cardboardFirst, the carton boxes were peeled off to show the corrugated part.  This is the messiest part of the project and I guess it was hardest part for them.  After some measurements, They started to glue the corrugated cardboard.  The cardboard served as the base of the lantern.  Tin caps from soda bottles were glued to make the star outline using glue sticks.  Outer circle  of the star were covered with diaper wrappers that were stripped to look like pompoms.  

For decorations, we made flowers out of used plastic cups, magazines and tin caps.  Below are the details how to do it.

Cut the cups dividing them into 3-4 strips.  Remove the bottom part of the cup.  Make one edge of the cut strips circular shape.  Since the cups are transparent, they painted the plastic strips red and once dried, the edges were highlighted with gold glitters.  They stick all the red strips together making three to four layers in an ice cream cup.  They chose green and red colored magazines to make flowers too.  Cut a leaf like pattern of different sizes and glue them together.  Flower tin caps.  There are available red and green tin cans and we decided to make flowers from it too.  Use three tin caps of the same color and stick them together making a triangular shape and glue a different color of tin cap on top of it.

Additional decors are paper beads, candles and chimes that served as the lantern's tail.  To add highlights we use paper beads.  Cut 2 inches thick strips from a magazine page vertically or which side is longer.   Cut the strips into two forming two triangles.  Roll the strip using a toothpick starting from the wider edge to the tip.  Keep the paper in the center and put glue on the tip and keep the paper rolling in the tip of your fingers.  When the paper locks push the bead out of the toothpick.   Candles are made up from corrugated cardboard and painted with green acrylic paint.  The yellow part of the candle was from the yellow ice cream cup.  To make the tail, we poke holes on the bottom of the cup using push pins and inserted strings.  Put a knot onto the string before inserting the cup to secure it, place another knot on the distance where you want the cup to be secured.



Above is the picture of Zsyka with her classmates.  Only class officers were in charge of making this project.  To commend, they responsible officers of K5 - Daisy.  I was not surprised that their lantern entry made it to Top 5.  It could have been included to Top 3 only for the reason that it was over sized.  I am not sure of what was the size requirement it should have met.  All in all,  I am so happy being a part of their project and meeting all them.

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