It is one of the customs to carry lanterns during the Mid-Autumn or Mooncake Festival, one of the fun things I look forward to when I was a young kid. To recreate a memory like this for my boys, I also got them some lanterns. When I was young, we only used the paper lanterns or the most, those batteries-operated.
I wanted to have a moon-shaped lantern this year to join my other 2 lanterns from last year. Yeah I DIY-ed 2 lanterns last year too, in line with one of my favorite drama last year. This year I watched and love another drama hahaha, so I got myself another lantern to remember it.
Wanted to just get one that is ready-made so I could skip all the hassle but there was none shaped like the moon. I ended up getting another DIY lantern but I was so occupied with some funeral and staycation affairs that I had no time to assemble it.
Luckily the sister came to the rescue!
She came over for dinner and she had some time while I was cooking dinner. Hence I got her to assemble the lantern instead. I documented the steps while she was at it. Usually when I take photos when I am the one assembling, it can be a bit chaotic hahah.
It wasn't difficult but there were some steps to follow.
Here are some parts of the lantern before assembled.
First thing first is to put in the small wooden sticks onto the small holes on the moon as the base.
To secure the small intermediate parts that join two moon bases together, we have to push each stick into it as tight as we can. So we used the art glue to hammer it in and later my son found his toy hammer for my sister haha.
It looks like this when one layer is done. Now time to hammer in the top layer.
Same as the bottom layer, this also has holes to let the small sticks poke through.
Hammer it up a little to make sure both bases are now tight.
So now the skeleton of the lantern is all done. Time to paste up the papers around it.
Another white piece to cover the in between sticks. We just needed to apply art glue on the sticks.
Added on some tassel and a stick to it, I inserted an LED fairy light coil into it.
All done!!!
One side of the moon looks like this.
The other side looks different but basically it has wordings about the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Hope you enjoyed reading this post on assembling a simple lantern.