I have finally started work on Lantern #1!! A lot of practical scheming later (about wooden frames to put into the lantern... and what position to hang it in while pasting... etc etc) Mrs Tan suggested actually cutting out the lantern by the rims using a penknife and cutting along the seams so I get some kind of 2D lantern which can be laid totally flat. A good way to explain it would be like a cube, when it's unfolded and becomes those shapes you see in Math problems...
I originally bought these long wooden sticks (they're very thin and flexible) from Daiso, 10 in a pack for $2... and I bought 5 packs... turns out they're not the balsa wood that Mrs Tan suggested but by taping three in a stick like so I think it should be reasonably strong, strong enough to maintain the optimal blowsiness of the lantern even when there's no wind. I 'ope!
So I made 7 sticks of 3-thin-sticks-stuck-together...
And after some gymnastics with the lantern trying to see how to fit the wooden sticks in we decided to cut it out by the rim. It felt like cutting away my baby, but there you go.
cutting along the seams...
I mixed Elmer's school glue (below) with a lot of water to create a diluted paste to paste my rice/tissue paper on with since the paper is so thin.
I used rice paper from my test lantern (one of them got torn so it became the 'test lantern') to test the glue mixture because I really don't have a formula for the percentages of water to glue in the mix! I cut off a scrap of yellow tissue paper and it stuck pretty well so I did OK the first time :)
the paint brush i used actually had red paint residue left over so the glue was like white strawberry jam, with red speckles.
first starting...
the day 1 finished state! so that's the first castle about 75% complete. there's still the second castle, the clouds, the background, then perhaps mini dreamweavers and poem lines/song lyrics to pen in, along with the details. oh! and the background, of course!
credits to jun hui for the use of her camera!
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