Saturday 9 November 2013

Tin Can Lanterns


This Week's Pin:  Tin Can Garden Lanterns
Who's This For:  Me for my Garden
Price:  40 cent candle

We have a well-established recycling routine in my house.  Everything is washed, sorted and thrown into the correct bin to head off to be reincarnated into something else by the local council. Recently, I've been keeping items so that I can facilitate another method of recycling: re-using.  Just the way our grandparents did.

We buy a tin of chocolate shards every so often to sprinkle on top of our home made coffees.  The tins have a gorgeous golden shine on the inside that I think will make a stunning glow when I place a candle in them.  The outside is a bright, royal blue but with all the writing I think I'll need to spray paint them when I'm done.

You don't need a lot of pressure to hammer a nail hole however, after a little while the hollow can will dent and crush.  So the answer is really simple:  fill will water and freeze!



Oh, no I've hoarded the wrong type of cans because these are not water tight!  I simply pressed blu-tac around the bottom join of the can and I filled it only 25% full with water, waited for it to freeze and then kept topping it up little by little and returning to the freezer.  That way, the pressure of the water won't push through the bottom of the can.



Once they were filled with ice, I created a simple stencil.  I found images for butterfly stencils and drew it freehand on some paper.  I didn't want Christmas designs because in Australia, Christmas is hot.  Really hot.  There's often a total fire ban at Christmas time, so can I have little Christmas lights with a burning fire inside? - no way.  But, the butterfly goes well in my garden.

I wrapped the paper around the can and placed on a towel so that it wouldn't roll away.  Then simply following the stencil, I hammered holes along the lines leaving a space between the holes at least as big as the hole I was creating.



To get rid of the ice, I placed them in a sink of warm water.  Stupidly, I put my hand in to pull out blu-tac - ouch -  shredded knuckles!

I really wanted to see how it looks, so I popped in a tea light candle and went into the darkest room in my house, the walk-in wardrobe.  I was right, the inside gives a golden glow.  

Last thing to do is to spray paint the outside.


Woo hoo they look really cute.  I can put them out in the garden when we have our next party and enjoy.  Now the only things left for Christmas preparation is to put up all the lights, decorations, buy all the presents and make some yummy treats.  Not much.

Soops


“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” – Osho



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