Year of the Horse

As we go galloping into the new year, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to make one of my favorite projects...Chinese lanterns. Even though there are so many beautiful hand made and scrapbooking papers available, I wanted to expand our horizons and have the artists craft their own.

We started by painting large pieces of water color paper with acrylic paint. This step on its own is such a great tactile project that can be used for so many art pieces. We added gold paint to the opposite side of the paper (the inside of the lanterns) to create the illusion of a glow. Some artists added dragon motif designs to adorn their lanterns and simply adhered this to the dried acrylic surface with decoupage paste.

Each step could be modified for individual needs and many artist's helped others at their table. The group dynamics were quite heartwarming!