How to make flying paper lanterns. How to make DIY sky lanterns How to make a flying paper lantern

Today it is fashionable to launch handmade Chinese lanterns into the sky. The lights flying into the sky are a wonderful sight that both children and adults like to admire. So where did this popular fun come from and what rules are important to follow in order to ensure the safety of others.

Story

For the first time, a paper Chinese lantern was mentioned in the annalistic description of the military campaigns of Zhuge Liang. This legendary Chinese general imitated the intervention of divine forces, instilling fear in his enemies. To do this, he used a paper bag and an oil lamp. The upward cloud of light convinced the opponents that the higher powers were on the side of the general.

Similar devices were also used to transmit signals between military units located far from each other. Information about this refers to the third century BC. Some experts claim that flying lanterns were also used to perform religious rituals.

The history of the mass distribution of luminous lanterns in Europe dates back to 2005. The reason was a tragic event: the 2004 earthquake in the Indian Ocean. A commemorative event for this tragedy and its victims was the mass launch of luminous lanterns in Thailand. And thanks to the photo of this event, which became the winner of the World Press Photo, the Chinese ritual has become popular among Europeans.

Device

The Chinese flying lantern consists of the following elements:

bamboo frame;
a burner made of fuel-impregnated fabric fixed on a thin wire;
a dome made of rice paper impregnated with a non-combustible composition.

The shape of the product can be any - most often spherical or cylindrical.

Operating principle

Chinese sky lanterns easily soar into the sky, acting on the same principles as hot air balloons. Remember the Montgolfier brothers? Their invention is shells filled with hot smoke and capable of flying for kilometers. The fact is that due to heating, the air becomes lighter due to a decrease in density. The difference between the density of air masses inside and outside the shell becomes the driving force.

That is why among the tips for launching flying lanterns you can often find this one: "in order to launch a flashlight, select a clear frosty night."

Some characteristics

The traditional Chinese lantern has the following parameters:

approximate weight from 50 to 100 g;
size in height from 70 to 170 cm;
burning time about 20 minutes;
the diameter of the lower ring is from 28 to 50 cm;
the approximate possible lifting height is up to 500 m.

Is it possible to launch Chinese lanterns in the city

Unregulated launch of flashlights often entails unpleasant consequences. Among them:

fires, including forest fires;
power plants put out of action;
loss of livestock that accidentally ate a fallen wire frame;
injury to animals.

Therefore, in some states there were bans associated with this beautiful and exciting event. Corresponding normative acts were also adopted in Russia.

Law prohibiting the launch of Chinese lanterns in Russia

In 2014, amendments to the Fire Regulations were approved. In accordance with the document, structures that rise to a height by heating the air inside with the help of open fire are prohibited from being launched in cities, other settlements, near forests. Lawyers warn: fines are prescribed for violators, for individuals these are amounts up to 1.5 thousand rubles, for legal entities - an order of magnitude higher.

By law, when planning an event with a mass launch of Chinese lanterns, prior approval from the air traffic management authorities is required.

Operational safety

But even in those places where flashlights are allowed, it is important to follow the rules that ensure the safety of others. The launch of Chinese lanterns is allowed in open spaces where you can control the place of the fall. There should be no residential buildings nearby. Do not use flashlights on windy days.

Responsible lovers of launching sky lanterns recommend: use a small amount of fuel, so you control the place of the fall and can not only make sure that it is completely burned out, but also clean up the garbage.

Kinds

Chinese lanterns can vary both in shape and purpose. Often Chinese lanterns are used simply for decoration. Similar hanging options often decorate Asian cafes and restaurants, oriental shops. Glowing hearts can often be seen at wedding celebrations. And the simplest paper crafts will decorate the house for the New Year or another family holiday.

DIY Chinese paper lanterns

You can easily make a Chinese lantern at home. Teachers recommend: involve children in joint creativity, because they love to participate in creating a fairy tale so much.

Option for children

The simplest craft, reminiscent of a flashlight, was cut out by almost everyone in childhood. To make it, you need only one sheet of colored paper, as well as scissors, glue, a ruler and a pencil as auxiliary materials.

The process consists of several short steps.

It is necessary to cut a strip two centimeters wide from the sheet.
Fold the remaining piece in half.
Draw a workpiece: draw a horizontal line at a distance of 4 cm from the edge and draw many vertical lines from the fold to it, located at the same distance from each other.
Make cuts along the vertical stripes and unfold the sheet.
Glue the edge and attach the handle from the strip cut off at the beginning from above.

According to all traditions

For such a hanging flashlight you will need a template. You can find it on the Internet or draw it yourself. For drawing, you need to take a sheet with an aspect ratio of one to two. The long side is placed horizontally and three horizontal lines are drawn: one in the center and two at a small distance (the same) from the edges. Then the sheet is divided by vertical lines into six sectors and one more line is drawn in the center of each sector. Circles about 2 cm in diameter are drawn around the intersection points of the central vertical lines with the extreme horizontal ones. Then, with rounded lines, connect the center of the upper circle, the intersection points of the vertical lines bounding the segment with the central horizontal ones, the center of the lower circle.

As a result, the template should be six identical segments connected along the center line. On it, a blank is cut out of red cardboard. Important note: you cannot divide the workpiece into segments!

Next, you need to connect the extreme segments to each other. Then combine the lower circles, sew them with a red thread and decorate with a brush formed from the threads. The same must be done with the upper circles, only instead of a brush at the top we leave a thread for which the flashlight will be hung.

sky lattern

To make a Chinese lantern, you need a frame. It can be made from foil-wrapped wooden fruit skewers. As the simplest fuel, you can use tablet candles or cotton wool soaked in alcohol. A candle or fleece is attached to the frame with a metal wire.

The shell can be made, as it was done traditionally, from rice or tissue paper. But other advice is often found on the Internet: use an ordinary garbage bag for a flashlight.

Decor for products

It makes sense to decorate lanterns designed for decoration, not for launching. One of the decor options can be done as follows. We make many, many (several tens) holes on decorated paper with a hole punch. We glue the circles that have fallen out onto the already made lantern according to the husk principle. Important: you need to distribute the circles evenly, making sure that the product is completely pasted over.

Today, everyone can make a Chinese paper lantern with their own hands. And it does not matter: whether it will be a luminous object soaring into the sky or a decor for decorating the interior. The main thing is that the ancient traditions are alive and make everyday life full and beautiful.

This article will talk about making Chinese lanterns with your own hands, which you can do yourself or involve children in creativity. Such lanterns are perfect for decorating a room, a garden, decorating a Christmas tree or a corner of dreams. They can easily turn your evening into the most unusual fairy tale. Indeed, in them we very often read about the hall, which is decorated with thousands of multi-colored lights, about a mysterious person who helps to light the way for the main character. So arm yourself with everything you need and let's start creating.

Option for children

In this article, we propose to view the most popular schemes for making Chinese lanterns. And here is the first of them - a children's flashlight.

In order to make such a bauble, you need to take colored paper, pencils, a ruler, scissors, glue, sparkles, satin ribbons and colored felt-tip pens.

A strip must be cut off from any edge of the leaf, in the future it will be a handle. Its width should be about two cm. We bend the remaining paper in half and draw a line on it, which is four cm from the edge. It is up to this strip that we will cut the flashlight.

Then, along the entire remaining length of the paper, we mark lines, about one to one and a half cm wide. We begin to make cuts along the indicated lines with scissors. We do this from the place of the fold, and stop near the marked line.

We open the paper and look, if there are traces, then we erase them with an eraser. Now we fasten the edges with glue or paper clips. On one side we attach a handle for a flashlight. Now you can decorate the flashlight with sparkles, tinsel, threads. Instead of colored paper, you can also use plain, white, in the future you can decorate it as you wish.

According to all traditions

The process of making the next Chinese paper lantern can be traced on the example of a master class.

In order to perform these procedures, it is necessary to prepare red cardboard, glue, scissors, a template, a pencil, a red thread and a needle, silver or gold paint.

Find and print a template on the Internet, apply it to cardboard and cut out the entire blank.

In no case should these parts be separated, they should specifically be similar, with a small accordion.

We glue the first and last parts together. The next step is to connect all the sides. Next, take a thread with a needle and make a small hole in the upper part of our flashlight. In the same way, we collect the lower part of the flashlight. We make a small brush for the bottom of the decoration. With the help of silver paint we draw a variety of patterns. They can be pre-made on stencils. We apply such a stencil to a flashlight and spray paint. Let it dry and the flashlight is ready.

sky lattern

In the next step-by-step instructions, you can consider the manufacture of a heavenly flying lantern.

To make this type of Chinese lantern, you will need tissue or rice paper, straws, copper wire, a candle, and glue.

We put pieces of tissue paper on top of each other and cut out rectangles. Then tightly fasten the edges together with glue. Then we make a small lining for the straws and fold them in the shape of a square. We twist the wire around the candle and attach it to the straws along the edges. We kindle a candle and let it warm up a little.

Decor for products

Well, the next point that we want to make out is one of the ways to decorate sky lanterns.

For work, we need decorated paper, a glue gun, a hole punch and simple batteries.

About seventy holes need to be punched on decorated paper with a hole punch.

Then we unfold the already prepared base ball, or take the one that we did in the last master class. We begin to glue it with these circles according to the husk principle.

Sometimes you want to give a dear and beloved person a gift from which his heart would freeze. Especially appropriate are such gifts for outstanding events in a person’s life, such as a wedding, anniversary, or just a romantic date. It's good at such moments to launch sky lanterns into the sky, that's right. beautiful and romantic when a burning heart rises up. You can make such lanterns with your own hands, it's not so difficult, but the work requires special accuracy and precision of execution, since we are dealing with fire.

Such lanterns have recently begun to replace fireworks, because the latter are much more expensive, and the opportunity to watch them is calculated in a few seconds, while sky lanterns can be observed for up to 30 minutes. The height of their flight reaches 200-300 meters, with a burner burning for 15-20 minutes, which heats the air inside the flashlight. Thanks to this hot air, they fly, then, when the burner goes out, the air gradually cools, and the lanterns fall to the ground.

Today we will tell you how make your own lantern. First you need to decide on the shape, it can be different: star, heart, car, flower and other shapes. We will make the simplest in the form of a dome.

For us to work you will need a thin trash bag light-colored with a capacity of 120 liters, tracing paper the size of a package, it is sold in the stationery department, a wire that holds its shape, a strip of dense fabric measuring 4x50 cm, liquid fuel, which kindle a fire, paraffin or wax, glue or adhesive tape, impregnation for paper fire retardant.

Even before work starts it is necessary to impregnate tracing paper with flame retardant, this is necessary to prevent the tracing paper from sunbathing and also the flame retardant has a water-repellent effect, which will not allow it to absorb excess moisture, thereby preventing our construction from being heavy. In the case of a strong frying pan from the burner, even if the fire touches such a tracing paper, it will simply burn a small hole in it, but ignition will not work. We unfold the garbage bag and glue tracing paper inside it with glue or double-sided tape. The result was a dome, which is protected from fire inside, and outside from rain.

Farther twist a ring out of wire the diameter is slightly less than the diameter of the bag and from the next two pieces we make a cross connection. In the center of this core we fix the burner and connect everything with the ring. Then we attach the entire frame to the already finished dome.
To obtain a burner, we impregnate the fabric with fuel and paraffin, fold the fabric itself into a rectangular shape 4x2.5 cm in size. Before attaching the burner to our dome, small tests must be carried out. To do this, we will have to make several more similar burners, but do not rush to make them at the same time. We ignite our burner and look at the height of the flame, while recording the burning time of the burner. If the frying pan is very high, it is worth removing several layers of fabric, if it is low, add it. The same applies to the burning time - if the burner burns very little, it will not have time to warm up the air in the dome. Fix the burner and light it again, if everything turned out well and the burning time suits us, we make another one exactly the same and fix it in the center of the metal core in the frame. Do not neglect these tests, as your safety and the altitude of the flashlight depend on them.

The sky lanterns that came to us from the Celestial Empire are called "Hum Loy" or "Hum Fey" in their homeland. Such lanterns are very popular not only in Asian countries, but throughout the world. Chinese sky lanterns are used in many celebrations, flash mobs, and in Thailand there is even a separate holiday, during which residents of the country and guests launch lanterns into the sky en masse. Recently, sky lanterns have become popular in our country, they can be purchased in different stores, but you can also do it yourself, which we will try right now.

So, before we start, let's watch a flashlight video:

There are many ways to make sky lanterns, but the simplest of them allows you to do this without much effort and expense.

We will need:
- Ordinary garbage bags for 30 liters. (it is not advised to take larger bags, as they are usually made of thicker polyethylene);
- Stationery tape;
- Wire diameter 0.5 mm;
- And also a tablet of dry fuel.

The materials have been collected. You can start the process of making a flashlight. The balloon that we will launch into the sky is made from several packages. It is advised to use two or three bags, depending on the air temperature. In winter, for example, you can be content with one package, on a summer evening a ball of two will launch, and in the afternoon in hot weather - of three. First of all, we cut off the packages along the soldering line and insert one of them into the other. The resulting seam with adhesive tape.

Next, you need to take care of the holder for our burner, which we will make from wire. To do this, we need two pieces of aluminum wire 40 cm long, which need to be twisted around the candle.

The packages will be attached to the holder, so special clips must be made at the ends.

Homemade sky lantern is ready.

It remains only to take dry fuel, which we will use as fuel. One tablet should be broken into four even parts. In some cases, the flashlight may not take off immediately. The reason for this may be the severity of the fuel. In such cases, you should wait a bit until some of the fuel burns out.

The Chinese lantern (another name is "sky lantern") is a light flying dome that smoothly floats upwards under the influence of air heated by a burning candle. Sky lanterns were invented a very long time ago - in 200-300 AD. e. and were used to instill fear in enemy troops. Nowadays, no one is afraid of them, but on the contrary, they have become a symbol of faith, hope and love. Every year more and more festivals are organized with the mass launch of Chinese lanterns.

We can also make a sky lantern, and without much effort and expense. For this we need:

- garbage bags of 30 liters (for larger bags, polyethylene is thicker and heavier);
- straws for a cocktail;
- candles;
- tape (or glue).

First, we glue the dome of the flashlight from two or three packages (in winter, one package will fly on a frosty day, but at least two are required in summer). To connect two packages, cut one of them along the solder line and insert one into the other. After that, glue the seam with tape.

Then we assemble a cross from the straws, connecting them with adhesive tape. We wind the adhesive tape to a minimum, because the design must be light so that it can take off.

Then we attach candles to this cross - with adhesive tape or glue:

We insert the resulting design into the bag and fix the ends of the cross with tape:

That's all, the sky lantern is assembled, it remains only to launch it. We call an assistant to us (one cannot cope with this matter). The assistant lifts and carefully straightens the dome of the flashlight, making sure that the candles are as far away from the walls of the dome as possible (otherwise they will quickly melt). And we light candles.

The flashlight does not take off immediately, so we wait for the air under the flashlight dome to warm up enough. To make this happen faster, put the lantern on the table. We sit and wait for a miracle.

And this miracle is happening! The flashlight does not want to take off for a long time, but when the candles burn out to half (lose half their weight), it rises above the table.

And slowly rises to the ceiling.

The crosspiece and the flashlight burner can be made differently. We take two pieces of thin aluminum wire (0.5 mm) about 40 cm each and twist them around the can of the “pill” candle. At the ends of the resulting cross we make clips for the dome.