CNY carousel lantern

I've been on an ang pow craft making spree lately since I'm gathering some help on decorations for a Chinese New Year (CNY) party that we'll be having in approximately 2 weeks time. Due to time constraint and everybody's busy schedule, we're focussing mostly on the simple ang pow lanterns such as ang cranes, ang pow fish, ang pow fan and mini ang pow lanterns.

I decided to take a little effort last Saturday and be a little more adventurous and made something new this year since I can use it for my house first. My schedule is topsy turvy and thus, finding time to make this over the weekend was like havoc in my house with the ang pow papers all over the table and floor and getting my fingers numb from all the stapling. It's a blessing that there are so many instructions and guidelines on the web and youtube.

Over the weekend, I've made three CNY carousel lanterns. Each carousel lantern require 32 pieces of red ang pows.Thanks to Submerryn for the instructions.

Here's the results of my progress :


Folding 48 pieces of a triangle shaped design (16 pieces required per lantern, 8 for the top and 8 for the bottom). Fold until hands are tired.



Stapling 8 pieces of the ang pow together to form a "hat". Be sure to insert a gold or red string to one of the hat before closing them up together. Insert a tassel or a hanging decoration tassel on the other hat before closing that up together as well. The 2 cone-shaped hats then need to be stapled together by stapling on the folded edges.



Made another 48 pieces of this design (16 pieces required per lantern). First, folding them into half, then pinching them at the side to staple the middle part of both sides together to look like a little butterfly bow. That's when my 2nd finger on my right started getting a little numb and swollen.

After finishing the previous step, we have to staple all 16 pieces together like these. Looks cute huh? Like a milipede or something.

Close up the 16 pieces of the ang pows in the previous steps to form a circle. We'll need to staple the circle to the edge of the 2 cone-shaped hats.

Tah Dah! My 3 lanterns - 2 outside my house and one inside.