Lately I've been wanting to make some bright, colorful and beachy summer craft projects. I've had this one in my head for a while. This tiki lantern is inspired from a card in the Club Tropicana kit from Bird's SVGs.
Here's a picture of the kit and the specific card that inspired this project:
These projects had me imagining a fabulous party on a tropical beach somewhere. So of course the party needs tiki torches for after the sun goes down!
The four-sided lantern 'shade' sits on a base that I adapted from the Bird Cage Luminary base in the Love Birds kit, also from Bird's SVGs. Instead of using two short and two long base pieces, I just cut out four of the short base pieces to form a square shape. The bottom panel square is 5" and the top panel square is 4", but you could obviously resize this to any size you want.
One thing I learned through trial and error was to remember the height of the base 'step' that your lantern shade will be sitting on. I made mine only to discover that when I slipped the shade on, my little tiki guy's toes weren't getting any light shining through because of the height of the base. I remedied this problem with some bamboo kitchen skewers!
I cut the skewers to fit the width of the base and glue two on each side as risers for the shade to sit on. Ideally I could have redesigned the shade to include more space at the bottom below his feet, but I actually really like the look of the bamboo for this type of project, so I'll just chalk it up to a happy accident.
I embellished with colorful flowers and foliage from Tim Holtz's Tropical thinlet set. And of course I added a little glitter to the hibiscus flower stamen. I do so love glitter and glow!!
I only added the palm 'crown' to the front panel of the lantern as you won't see the other sides where I'll be displaying it, but you could certainly have a ball adding all kinds of embellishments to this little guy.
I'm so pleased with how this project turned out. The flickering tea light inside really makes this look like it could be a torch. I think these would be so much fun as centerpieces for a luau-themed party!
Anybody ready for a tropical drink yet?
Thanks for stopping by. As always, I'd love to hear what you think, so feel free to leave a comment below.
