Upcycle Living

How do you like my Mid Autumn Lantern lamp shade? Since I've converted some paper lanterns into tea light shades , I thought I'd do just 1 more festive decor. Using the same method from the  tea light shades , by cutting out a large opening on the bottom of the largest paper lantern I could find; I simply place it over a table lamp. Obviously, I removed the existing lamp shade and put aside for the moment. Took me less than 10 minutes to get this done, and if I'm careful enough not to rip or tear it upon removal, I could probably reuse it next year.

Lighting and putting up the colourful lanterns at Mid Autumn Festival is always a fun thing to do. The adults will guard the kids with the candle lighting and the hanging of the lanterns at first; 30 minutes later it is the adults who can't seem to stop playing with fire. The traditional paper lanterns are our favourite but the problem is: it is extremely dangerous because the candles will either fall off halfway burning and burn the lantern up, or even if the candle manage to burn till the end it might still burn a big hole on the bottom of the lantern. So I decided to revive these lanterns by cutting out the burnt bit on the bottom and make a large round opening, cup them over some tealights: and serve as a beautiful centre piece on the coffee table: Now they are a lot safer to handle, and could probably last much longer (and I can reuse them next year!).

I shall sit under these lanterns to enjoy my mooncake with some green tea... It's been a while since we got our hands on some silly little crafty projects, about time to get those old paper lanterns out from the storage - as Mid Autumn Festival is just around the corner. Last year we turned some paper lanterns into tea light shades , and although the idea can still be reused, I thought we could do something different with the unused ones. The biggest issue we have with these paper lanterns was that they get burnt easily, so a non-fire related solution is essential. I saw some lanterns that use bulbs and thought that we can have our DIY ones: If the power sockets were designed in a more intelligent way, i.e. higher up on the wall and not all the way down close to the floor, we could have hung the lanterns horizontally, across the window. But since the angel lights cable isn't long enough and this is the furthest it can reach so it will have to ...

My steel oil burner has an open space for tea lights, which looks really pretty. But we live in the hot tropics and need to have the fan on all the time; this means it will keep blowing out the candle flame, which is rather annoying. I reused to buy a specific lantern shade because 1: it's unnecessary to spend extra money, and 2: it will only add on to our clutter. I then remember that we frosted the bathroom windows with some stickers and there is a little leftover which we had no idea what to do with it. So I cut the leftover sticker into a long rectangle (diagram A), then fold the rectangle down the middle so that both flaps are equal size (this has to be done before the protective waxy sheet is removed). Remove the protective sheet and stick both sides together so now we have a thicker frosted sheet. Roll the sheet by the length to make a cylinder, and stick the edges together with double-sided tape (diagram C). And now we have a frosted shade that protects the candle flame fro...