Worth it…

This takes a lot more time and effort but I do think it is worth it as it is nicer and looks a lot more impressive…

…than the ones in this earlier post.

I saw it in the newspapers a long time ago, back in the 90’s, and I made quite a few then, following the steps and instructions given. However, it required a lot of ang pao packets so I had to go round the banks to ask for as many as I could lay my hands on.

If one were to follow the original faithfully, one would need 36 ang pao packets to make one lantern but I have modified it a bit and for each, I would only need 24…so if you were to make two lanterns, you would have saved enough to make a third one.

If the paper used for the ang pao packets is not hard enough, you may need to cut cards to place inside each of them…

…so that your lantern would be able to stand upright and not go all limp and look quite awful as a result of that.

In the original, you will have to make triangles, 12 horizontal and 12 vertical and you glue them all together to make the hexagon for the top and a taller, narrower one for the bottom before putting the two parts together.

Instead of that, I stapled two packets together to make the figure 7, the top for the side and the “leg” for the rib in the lantern…

Keep doing it…

…till you have six sides and six ribs. Use sellotape to join the ribs together in the middle before you seal off the last side in the hexagon…

Put that aside and proceed to make the bottom part of the lantern. Stick two ang pao packets together like this…

– the one with the flap open is for the rib and the other one is for the side. Again, you will need six sides and six ribs…

…and join them altogether like this…

This will be the hexagon for the bottom part of the lantern.

In the original, one was told to apply glue to the flaps to stick the bottom hexagon to the ribs in the top part and I guess that can be done here as well but I do think it would be good to reinforce that with sellotape and/or staples.

Attach the string to hang it up with and the tail…and there you have it…

…a lantern for your Chinese New Year decoration.

Don’t you think this one is nice?