How to make...
Paper umbrella Tiki bar lanterns
Picture the scene, you’re throwing a bit of a Luau party, you’ve a room full of guests in dubiously patterned shirts drinking everything from Mai Tais to Rum Runners. The lights are low, ‘Quiet Village’ is playing in the background and the conversation turns to your colourful, ‘puffer-fish like’ lanterns…
[Cough cough] “Well err… actually I made these little beauties earlier today. They only took me an hour or so”.
Win! Not only do you hold awesome parties, you’re creative and have great taste!
That aside, what else are you going to do with those old cocktail umbrellas when you’re finished with them? Well ok, we might be pushing it a bit there – that’s a lot of Pina Colada’s you’re going to need to get through. It’s probably easier to buy a box from the local store.
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Supplies needed
- Paper lantern/s – use the white, ribbed ball shaped ones that flatten down into a circle.
- A pack or two of cocktail umbrellas.
- 1-3 Battery powered ‘tea lights’ for each lantern.
- Twine to hang each lantern with.
- Or a standard bulb and cord if you want to use an existing fitting.
- Scissors.
- A glue gun.
Let's get started!
Step 1:
- Open up your lantern and place on a flat surface next to you.
- Separate your box of umbrellas out into their respective colours and fully open a good portion of them.
- Cut-off their sticks just beneath the point where the spars meet. It’s best to hold the stick at the end when cutting, so that it doesn’t ping across the room.
Step 2:
- Put a blob of hot-glue onto the stub of the stem of each umbrella and start attaching them one at a time to the lantern.
- Hold each one for a few seconds until the glue cools and dries.
- Start at the bottom of the lantern and work your way around and up, layer by layer.
- Make sure each umbrella slightly overlaps the one next to it.
- If you find that they start popping out at the edges with the pressure, simply lift the tips and apply a little more hot-glue. We used loads on ours 🙂
- You can leave the umbrellas overlapping the holes at the top and bottom, though some people like to trim them up neatly around the edge of the circle.
- Whatever you do, make sure you don’t cover the holes completely as this is where you’ll be inserting your bulb or tea light.
Step 3:
- If you’re using a battery powered ‘tea light’, you can hot-glue it to the piece of wire at the top or bottom of your lantern, making sure you can still access the on/off switch. But what we did is loosely place two or three in the bottom, as the wire strut kept them from falling out.
- Attach your twine to the wire at the top of the lantern and hang from your desired location.
- Or, if you’re using an existing light fitting, remove the old shade and attach your new tiki one.
Hot Tips
- Use whatever colours you fancy (but make sure you have enough of each) – try using swathes of blue and violet, gradiating to red at the top, or blue, sea green and yellow – or of course, you can just go completely random!
- You don’t need to cover the whole lantern in umbrellas – it could be that the base is roughly covered and then you scatter a few around the top half, leaving patches of white showing through.
- The lanterns work well when hung in clusters of different sizes.
- They’re more suited for indoor use than out, but if you know what the weather’s going to be like they’d look amazing strung across a backyard at night.
Taking it next level
What’s better than having clusters of mood enhancing tiki lanterns hanging from your bar ceiling? Using ultraviolet black light bulbs in them of course!
For a simple hack, buy a pack of cheap UV bulbs from somewhere like Amazon, plus a handful of flat watch batteries. Then, on the evening of your event, gently prise the contacts of the bulbs apart and slip them around the sides of the batteries. The bulb should light up and stay on.
For a bit of extra security attach a little bit of hot glue around the bulb contacts and the battery – making sure it doesn’t go in-between them, otherwise it won’t work. Or you could use a small piece of tape.
Then glue the battery and bulb to the wire at the top (or bottom) of the lantern.
The batteries we used were 3V CR2032, along with 3.2-3.4V bulbs.
We put a whole lotta love, lime and rum into our work, so if you think your friends would find this article useful, we’d be thrilled if you could share it with them!
Thank you. Mahalo.
