Autumn is my favourite season. I love the beauty of the trees, the crisp air, busy animals and getting to snuggle up warm with my crochet! In this blog post I’m going to share with you our Autumn lanterns. I’ve updated (2024) the post to ensure all links are working. If you’re looking for Autumn gift ideas head to this post. Looking for Autumn book recommendations? Head to this post.
We love making changes to our nature table in our home and adding our homemade creations. If you’d like to see our nature table set up there’s a link here.
So, let’s dive in to Autumn lanterns. I’ve made two different styles, one a silhouette style and the other a pumpkin.
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Autumn Homemade Lanterns
Both of these ideas I made for an Arts and Crafts subscription box back in September 2019. For all the resources please see the resource section at the bottom of the post.
Silhouette Autumn Lantern
What You Need
- Cardboard or other card stock – we used a recycled delivery box
- Black Paint (or another colour of your choosing)
- Scissors
- Pencil
- Crayons
- Vellum
- Glue
- Optional stencils/ template (you can find my template below for very simple Autumn designs)
How To Make
I’ve used the side of a packaging box, but you could easily make a free standing one that just slots into a postcard holder and you pop a light behind.
First draw a rectangle about 1-1.5cm in from the edge of your piece of card. Either free hand or using the stencils above draw on your Autumn silhouette scene.
Adult help needed for the next bit. Poke a starting hole in your scene. Older children may be able to cut the shapes out themselves, but younger children will need this completed by an adult.
If you’re cutting for them they can move onto the next step straight away.
Using Autumnal colours, colour a piece of the vellum using crayons.
Now paint the silhouette. I’ve used black which turned a lovely dark brown when it dried on the cardboard. You can paint whatever colour you have available. If you’ve used a piece of cardstock you may not want to paint at all. Leave to dry.
Turn over the silhouette so you are working on the reverse. Measure and cut a piece of vellum to fit your scene. Apply glue to your Autumn scene and press the vellum firmly in place. Use something heavy to secure in place and leave to dry.
You can glue and peg the top together or I chose to use some twine to hold the lantern together. Place an LED tea light inside or behind your lantern for a beautiful effect.
Pumpkin Autumn Lantern
What You Need
Download “Autumn Simple Template” Autumn-Template.pdf – Downloaded 3 times – 22.23 KBHow To Make
This is a great one for beginning scissor users!
Using the vellum, draw lines length-ways about 1.5cms apart.
Carefully, cut along the lines to make long thin strips (they don’t need to be perfect – it adds to the character if they’re not). Either using the stencil or freehand draw out pumpkin leaves onto your vellum and cut these out.
Colour each strip using red, orange and yellow crayons. Colour the leaves green. You can make your pumpkin any colour you like or a full rainbow – colours are just suggestions.
Adult help needed – make a small hole in both ends of the strips and in the stalks of the leaves. My daughter loves using this small single hole punch.
Gather all of one end of the strips together and insert twine/ yarn/ ribbon. Next thread the string through the other end of the strips. Lastly, add the leaves. Tie together loosely. If you don’t have anything to attach together then you can use glue to stick the end of the strip together like a paper chain.
Now, spread the strips out and before completely covering insert a LED tea light for the magic to happen.
Other Autumnal Light Ideas
Rolling beeswax sheets into candles is an activity we like to do to welcome in the different seasons. You’ll find our Summer candles here.
