Punched "Tin" Lanterns

April 5, 2017
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I made these lanterns last night. The smaller one is about scaled to about 80% of the large one. I initially was going to straight up use the window template I found on weloveminiatures.com in the "Freebies" section but then I decided to alter that a bit and do a punched tin instead of a traditional window lantern. It was the same basic principle but I made my own template so the lanterns would be shorter and fatter.

I cut the middle portion out of cardstock, marked off where I wanted my punches to live, and then went at it with a quilting pin to make the punches. I followed that by punching out holes using my leather punch (which conveniently has 7 different size hole punches). The tops and bottoms are matboard in varying sizes stacked on top of each other. I just kept gluing squares on until I felt like it had the right look. I added one last very small square on the top with a circle cut out of the center so that the pearl bead for the finial would just kind of nestle in. Final step for the top was adding in an eye pin I made with some wire. For the bottom, I glued the bottom of the dismantled Americana light.

I painted them after but if I had to do it again, I'd paint the punched tin part before. The paint kept going into the tiny holes. I was able to clear them out but it would have been easier to just paint them to begin with and punch after. I may still do a wash of black to antique them some.