Rain coloring and a pentagon star lantern

We had a lot of rain this weekend and besides running around outside enjoying getting wet and splashing in the puddles and mud, we got out the water color paper and water soluble crayons.

Keenan got busy drawing and grating the crayons, which was very entertaining for him.

We then set the papers in the rain to see what we had created together with mother nature.

Once they were dry, we decided to make a lantern out them. I have been wanting to make the star lantern, the pentagon one, from Childhood Magic, and thought I should get to it before the wonderful tutorial is no longer there. I used the template here and drew it straight from the computer screen. It is perhaps a bit large, but for a first try I thought it would make it easier to work with.

I cut out 11 pentagons, then found the middle of each side, connected the dots to create yet another pentagon inside all 11 original pentagons. then folded down the sides, to create little stars inside the pentagons.

There is a lot of cutting, folding and and measuring in this project, but for me the most challenging part was the gluing, I tried three different kinds of glue and settled on the glue stick, still the flaps kept opening up once I moved on to the next flap, at the end I used clothes pins to hold down the top and bottom flaps.

Here are the two half s, each with 5 pentagons glued together.

And here is what it looked like all glued up, it came out a bit wobbly, the stars not quite even, still  lovely though. Next time I will use simple colored water paper, to make a more pleasing looking unlit lantern, yet at night you wouldn't know. It is such a beautiful little star.

The soft glowing light inside the fireplace is just a pleasure to behold.

I will most certainly be making more of these, different colors, different sizes, such a joy!!

~Happy monday to you all~