We are all experiencing how boring and stressful things are these days in stay at home mode. I go between feeling so busy because I spend so much time worrying, to super bored and trying decide which project to take on next. I saw this one recently, and every minute I have spent planning it has made me more and more excited:
Floral Paper Lantern Hanging Lights
Ellie and I are going to do this in her room, and we ordered the supplies yesterday (more below).
I also really like these but couldn’t get her on board with pink (she’s 14, and still anti-pink).
She was initially anti-flower (“too babyish”), so we considered something plain like these. Truth be told, I convinced her to do the flowers by promising I’d take them off if she hates them, so that’s a possibility but I truly think she’ll like it when it’s done.She helped pick the flowers at Etsy, so I think we’re good.
I like these non-electrified and tissue paper ones, too, for an even easier project:
But I digress. Here is what we did for supplies:
Lanterns
I ended up getting the lanterns here:
Although I think I bought the last one because they are out of stock now. You can also get them here.
Flowers:
Etsy is the place to go for these. We ended up ordering these for the base (like the newsprint flowers in the original):
What I love so much about these is that they are pages from the Harry Potter books. They are Ellie’s favorite books and movies (in fact, she did a Harry Potter marathon last week and watched all eight movies in a row over 22 hours. Sounds like torture to me but she does it once a year and loves it).
And we ordered these for the colorful flowers:
And these leaves:
Here is the original compared to our supplies. Our flowers are a little taller, but I think I can make them work. We’ll see:
I also considered these but the colors weren’t quite right. Aren’t they gorgeous though?
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I might add a couple of these cute birds, too, but am going to wait to see how they look first (also, Ellie is leary). It was so much easier when she was little and I could just do what I wanted and she loved everything!! The only thing she ever asked me for (carpeted walls) she didn’t get, but I got her a puppy instead (true story).
The original has some vellum butterflies and pearl accents, and maybe we’ll get to that, but I want to start simple so we can do it together.
As far as electrifying, we are going to replace her ceiling light with just a bulb and hang the largest globe over it. For the rest, we will electrify with holiday lights that run behind the globes, across the ceiling, down behind the curtain and to an outlet. I’ll probably put an Alexa outlet in so she can voice activate (“Alexa, turn on the cool globe lights my mom made for me!”). The cord across the ceiling isn’t great, but it won’t be visible as you walk in so I think I can live with it.
Finally, I saw these other projects while looking for flowers, and thought they were really cute for kids, too:
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Happy crafting everyone!