DIY Christmas Lantern

Friday afternoon our Stamping Make & Take group celebrated our annual Christmas Party at Vivian's.

This will be my second year attending.  Unfortunately last year I was all set to go, but Hubbie ended up in the ER.  Thankfully he was okay and is doing fine.

For this party, it is a tradition that we are to make/bring a handmade gift for our Dirty Santa game.

This game can be intimidating due to the super talented and creative Ladies' creations!

 I made this DIY Christmas Lantern using Pixie Dust Housewife's YouTube Tutorial: DIY Dollar Tree Lantern How-To.

Believe it or not, it's super easy to make.

While I was still in MN, I made one for practice.  I was so glad I did the "practice DIY Lantern" before I made my Christmas one.  It really helped me iron out the do's & don'ts in the making process.  For example: I didn't like the little tabs/brackets that held the glass in place.  So I removed them and used hot glue to adhered the glass to the frame.  Another thing I learned was to hide the hot glue better so I wouldn't see it so much from the outside...as you can see from this picture.

 This is the  back of the lantern.  Most of the decorations are from Michaels.  

For the bottom of the lantern, I used really sturdy poster or picture frame mat board, and then covered it with pretty Christmas-y scrapbook paper.

 I tried so hard to make a pretty ribbon bow using the polka-dotted ribbon streaming down the sides; but I'm hopeless at it!  That should be my next DIY tutorial to watch.

 It would have been perfect if the little red truck pick would have matched to the back of another one (mirror image like).  So to fix this, I added a little bird vignette decoration to the back of it.

To add a little sparkle to it all, I hung this pretty bright and shiny snowflake from the top of the lantern.

I think it would have looked much better with a battery operated candle.  I'll keep that in mind when I make another lantern for this home.

I'm happy to say that my handmade gift was a success.  It was stolen 3 times before the lucky final Lady stole it away...so that would actually be 4 times!!!

Tomorrow I'll show you the pretty Christmas handmade gift I came home with.

Cooking & Crafting with J & J #127