Make your own sky lantern

learn how to make your own sky lanterns with the easy instructions. They are a great way to fill your sky with bright lights, and are a great way to teach young children or even students about how hot air balloons work. Make your own sky lantern to celebrate weddings, birthdays of even anniversaries, you can even decorate them using stencils or paper cut-outs from magazines. To create a sky lantern you wil only need a few things, and soon you'll have your very own, home made sky lantern.

Making a sky lantern

  • 1 metre of tissue paper
  • Scissors
  • Strong Glue
  • Universal Paper Shield
  • Flame Retardant Spray
  • String
  • 4 dowels of 3/32-by-18 inch
  • balsa wood
  • Candle wick
  • 2 fishing hooks
  • Hot glue gun
  • Rubbing alcohol

  1. Cut out two 75cm by 1 metre tall rectangles from tissue paper. Spray these with flame retardant on each side and allow them to dry. Cut the upper right and left hand corners of each tissue paper sheet. Brush on a thin coat of glue on the top, left and right side edges of each piece of tissue paper. Do not glue the bottom edge. Press these pieces together and allow them to dry.

  2. Hot glue two fishing hooks together so that the hooks are upside down and pointing out. Wrap a candle wick string around the fishing hooks to form a ball.

  3. Soak two 3/32-by-18 inch Balsa wood dowels in a bucket of water for 24 hours. This will make them extremely pliable. Bend these two dowels into a circle and tie them together. Lay two dowels across this hoop so that the dowels intersect the hoop vertically and horizontally.

  4. Cut four lengths of string into 6-inch segments and spray with flame retardant. Tie all four of these strings to the hoop. Tape the tips of the string inside the tissue paper bag.

  5. Soak the ball of wick in alcohol. Have a friend hold the bag up and slightly open as you place the wick ball on the hoop frame. Carefully light the wick ball with a long match. Allow the sky lanternto begin to inflate with hot air befmake-your-own-skyore letting go.

Make sure to be careful with your sky lantern, and to think about what might happen if you let it go, apart from the environmental factors, also remember you might just lose the sky lantern you worked so hard to create.