With the lantern festival coming up, you can turn your red envelopes into cute little lanterns!
You will need a red envelope, double sided tape (or glue), art knife, straight edge, a cutting mat, and pencil (optional).
Here’s a quick how-to video:
First, cut off the flap of the envelope. You will not need that piece. Then slice open your red envelope on all sides to reveal two rectangles.
Trim off 1/2” from the long side of the rectangle that has less decorations, and put it aside.
On the backside of the rectangle that has more decorations, mark off 1/2” from the edge of the long sides. Then, slice 1/4” width segments between your pencil marks. Go ahead and first mark the segments with pencil if you want to be exact and do not have a cutting mat.
Now it’s time to assemble your lantern!
Put double sided tape on the two long sides of the rectangle that was trimmed. Line up and adhere the long sides of the rectangle with the segments to the long sides of the trimmed rectangle.
On one of the short sides, cut off one of the segments and put double sided tape there. Unite the two short sides of the lantern.
Finally put double-sided tape on the 1/2” strip of envelope that we had put aside earlier to stick on as a handle for the lantern.
For extra festiveness, we used battery operated, flameless candle lights to display the lanterns.
This was a quick and easy craft to do with my kiddos. The 7 and 9 year olds were able to take care of all of the non cutting parts without issue. We hope you enjoy trying it with all of the red envelopes you have collected over the Lunar New Year! 😉
Trilingual Texpats 