Aluminium Can Lantern

Lanterns are beautiful and often festive, but did you know that you can make your own out of used aluminium cans? This of course isn’t a new idea and was actually done a long time ago when it wasn’t so easy to buy things and people tend to fully make use of materials around them in order to produce something. Milk cans, bamboo and coconut shells can be used to make lamps and lanterns for use around the house.

The next time you’re enjoying a soda, try collecting the cans. First, clean and dry the cans and then cut lines all around the sides of the cans vertically from up to down like stripes. Refer to the picture above.
Then compress the can by pressing the top and bottom together to gently form the shape of a lamp. The cans can then be spray-painted or decorated, or even left as it is for a more ‘DIY’ look. To get a good even colour though, it must first be sprayed with a white base-coat before painting it in the colour you desire.

The lantern aluminium cans are now ready to be hanged! What I did was to hang them in a spiral pattern for added ‘oomph’ but you can choose to hang them in many ways. In the way I liked it, it takes up to five lamps to get the effect I wanted. As I used it during the recent Raya celebrations, I cut-out shapes of moons and stars from used to give a touch of Raya to the lamp.

To light the lamp, a good source will be battery powered LED lights or small bulbs as these pose no fire risk. A candle will quickly heat up the can and be a burn hazard.

 

Decorations made from used or recyclable materials can be beautiful, interesting and it helps to preserve our environment with only a small cost involved. Do it with your family and friends as a weekend project and let the kids run wild with their imagination!.

Posted by Ayu
Learning Specialist, Petrosains