How to DIY your own paper candle bag lanterns

Sure you can buy paper bag lanterns off the shelf in many colours and clever designs and they are stunning and super value for any party, wedding or event but here are some reasons to make your own designs.

Maybe you want to make a special message on a paper bag lantern for a loved one like I did for my wife with this water colour style design above. You can use many or just one as a table center piece during an intimate and romantic dinner.

Kids love painting or drawing and the added bonus of the anticipation of what their personalised candle bag lantern will look like with a candle inside, just adds to the whole experience. I know because my 9 year old twins have been making them for 3 years now and it's become a staple of any school holiday and we're running out of ideas to keep the kids entertained. If it was up to them they would use up all our stock of plain paper bag lanterns and there would be nothing left to sell.

Maybe you are having a little get-together to remember a loved one who has passed on. How you go about this is something you will probably have already decided but examples I hear are "he used to love to fish this lake so we came here just before sunset with a few picnic blankets, some prepared food and a barbecue and and lit the paper bag lanterns that we had placed, some around us and a few leading down to the shore and we didn't so much talk about him, the messages we had written on each of our lanterns did that for us. We just enjoyed the company of our family and friends and had the wonderful sense that he was all around us".

   

Or you can just leave one by the gravestone with a tea light candle inside. The paper is flameproof and it's also biodegradable  so there are no concerns about the environment.

Customers have also told me they used the paper bag lanterns to wish their friends, a young couple, bon voyage at a leading party when they were off to Australia for a working holiday. One person wrote to say that they had a garden party in their home and a friend had brought a pack of 50 plain white tea light lantern bags, a bag of Ikea tea light candles and a few felt pens. As the afternoon was turning to dusk they handed out the pens and the paper lanterns and asked everyone to write a message to the couple and wish them well. As the sun set they placed the lanterns with all their personalised messages all over the garden and said the effect was spellbinding. The couple collected them all the next morning and planned to take a photo of each message so they would never forget the words of their friends.

The possibilities are of course endless so I won't go on. However I will recommend some materials to use.

• For obvious reasons always start with flame retardant plain white paper bag lanterns available here.
• Kids crayons are the next obvious choice. The vivid colours go on quickly and will look amazing when back-lit with the candle.
• Sharpie felt pens are probably the best on the market but if you have others then give them a go.
• Colouring pencils are hard work. The art will look great in the daylight but for some reason they don't look so good at night with a tea light candle inside the paper bag lantern.
• Any paint, even those little hard kids paints that you just add water too are very effective,

Finally I must recommend an iPad app simply called 'Paper'. It's free for the basic version with all colours but if you want to add more brushes or pencils etc they are $1.99 each and believe me once you try this you probably will. With this app you can paint or draw amazing pictures and email them to yourself from your iPhone or iPad and then print the picture directly onto a plain white paper bag lantern.

Well that just about wraps up my Easter Sunday blog on how and why to make your own DIY paper bag luminaries. Remember we have the plain white candle bag lanterns in stock in Australia here and the plain blank paper bag lanterns available in the UK here. Everyone else just visit either site and we'll ship worldwide.

Happy Easter Y'all.