Angry Bird Lantern

Let me share on my girl's pre-school's lantern project for the mid autumn festive that I did with her a week ago. It was a environmental friendly project and we were supposed to use only recycled materials.

Well, as you can guess, my girl wanted an Angry Bird lantern.  We brainstormed and came up the idea of making a Pig's castle with the King pig inside and the red angry bird swinging onto the castle.  The angry bird will be suspended mid air using a fishing net from one end of a cloth hanger while the King pig will reside in his 'castle' with the eggs!

The main 'castle' is made from a discarded chicken essense box with cut out infront and on the top so that I can insert the candle and King Pig.  Did you get a glimpse of the King Pig sitting in there?

Here's the closeup view.

I've used an empty chicken essense glass bottle for the green pig. Paint it green with acrylic paint all over and paste the eyes, ears and nose in with mod podge.  The eyes, ears and nose are basically drawn on white paper, coloured over with markers and outlined with black marker.

We attached the 'crown' on top of the pig using mod podge.  Do you recognise the 'crown'? It was part of the christmas tree ornament ball, the top part that is attached to a string. 

King pig drying out the paint with the Angry bird in upside down posture!

My girl wanted the Bomber Bird but since I only have Red paint, we go for the Red Bird instead. We use one of the Christmas tree ball and paint it all Red and overlay with white for the tummy.  Waited for it to dry before sticking the eye brows, eyes and orange beak. The eye brows and eyes are pain white paper but the beak was from the cut-out discard from the chicken essense box. I just draw free hand and cut it out with the outline.  Looks like the real thing yah!

I attach the angry bird using a fishing net to one end of the cloth hanger and on the other end, attach the 'castle'! Totally recycled and home-made! Now, the angry bird can swing over and hit the 'castle' as you carry the cloth hanger. So fun!

I lit the tea candle and insert through the cut-out into the 'castle' to make it lantern-like.  The yellow paper trim on top of the 'castle' was done by my girl as it is suppose to look 'castle-like'. We even got the eggs infront!

The king pig in the 'castle' with the eggs and the 2 cotton cording on both ends to attach to the hanger.

We are so pleased with this lantern, except that we got the acrylic paint all over us and the floor!! It's hard to paint a round ball and it kept tripping and rolling on the floor while we dry them. We inserted one end of the paintbrush through the top of the ball and dry it upside down on a bottle. Not very stable and hence the frequent trip overs when we accidentally touch it.

Anyway, these were the paper lanterns that I bought for them that is less accident prone. It had an LED flickering light in it and it's light weight because it was made from paper. My girls walk around with it, or rather, my little one drag her's on the floor as the lantern was abit big for her. 

We walk around our place on the night of the mid-autumn festive (13 September) and ate mooncakes and drank green tea! It's part of the must-haves for this festive which celebrate reunion of families under the Full Moon!

image source: http://www.chinatownconnection.com/