I have had a plain, unopened paper lantern sitting one of my craft boxes for a couple years now and I decided that this weekend was finally the time to do something with it.  I came up with this idea unsure of how it would work out but I think all said and done, it looks pretty cute.  Bonus… It doesn’t get any more simple than this in terms of DIYs.

What you’ll need:

A plain white paper lantern

Spray paint in a color of your choice- I chose the dark blue here in an effort to make the “stars” stick out more

A skewer or some  other long sharp object

What you’ll do:

1. Unfold your lantern and hang it up outside somewhere.  I used a bungie cord and hung it from a tree.  Then spray paint it the color of your choosing.  I did 2 coats to make it darker.

2. After dry, take your skewer and pierce a bunch of little holes in it.

3.  Insert a lightbulb in the top (following the instructions that came with the lantern) and call it a day.  Since I hung mine outside and I already had bistro lights in my tree, I just pulled the cord a little tighter and worked several of the lights into the lantern.  I am not sure it impacted the effect at all to have the other bistro lights around it.  It may actually have been more dramatic if it wasn’t surrounded by light as well.

If anyone tried this with a different color, let me know how it goes.  I would be interested to know how the light shines through in the pierced spots.  I also thinking making some larger holes and some smaller would be pretty as well.