Quick and easy Halloween lanterns for children to make

With Halloween just around the corner, why not make some pretty upcycled glowing lanterns with the children.

I created a few Halloween and Day of the Dead items and thought it was rather fitting to get my son involved and create Day of the Dead lanterns.

Materials used
* Old jars and bottles - plastic preferable or glass with adult supervision
* Bostik glue - watered down
* Napkins
* LED tea lights
* Paint is an option to change the lid colours

Stripping back napkins

When using paper napkins for decoupage always strip back the ply (which is the layers) to get to the final sheet that has the print on.  The extra ply sheets can be used for clear up as we are using watered down glue - so nothing is wasted.

Once the napkin is a single ply, cut around the image.  So as not to waste the remaining section of the napkin cut them up to make another lantern with the cut-up squares/shapes.

This is the fun messy section!  Water down the glue and paint the glue on the jars and add the skulls, prints and pieces of tissue.

What this craft showed me was that children love messy play and paintbrushes - it doesn't need to be painted on the end of the brush either, so long as it's messy it's a winner in our house!

Our jars were decorated upside down so that the LED tea lights can sit nicely in the lids.

I think these look fantastic in the evening light, this is a quick and easy craft to do with the children, with the added fun of messy play, definitely a winner.