Ramadhan Decorative Lanterns

Asalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu…

It has been quite some time since I last blogged. In fact the kids and I have been very busy with quite a few projects over the last couple of months so I shall begin sharing them now.

During Ramadhan I came up with the idea of making Ramadhan Lanterns with the kids. It was something I had made myself as a kid (although the focus wasn’t on Ramadhan then). I don’t really know where the idea of lanterns ties in with Ramadhan but I tied in the craft with a lesson on the Parable of the Lamp from Surat An-Noor [Qur’an 24:35]

 اللَّهُ نُورُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ ۚ مَثَلُ نُورِهِ كَمِشْكَاةٍ فِيهَا مِصْبَاحٌ ۖ الْمِصْبَاحُ فِي زُجَاجَةٍ ۖ الزُّجَاجَةُ كَأَنَّهَا كَوْكَبٌ دُرِّيٌّ يُوقَدُ مِن شَجَرَةٍ مُّبَارَكَةٍ زَيْتُونَةٍ لَّا شَرْقِيَّةٍ وَلَا غَرْبِيَّةٍ يَكَادُ زَيْتُهَا يُضِيءُ وَلَوْ لَمْ تَمْسَسْهُ نَارٌ ۚ نُّورٌ عَلَىٰ نُورٍ ۗ يَهْدِي اللَّهُ لِنُورِهِ مَن يَشَاءُ ۚ وَيَضْرِبُ اللَّهُ الْأَمْثَالَ لِلنَّاسِ ۗ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as (if there were) a niche and within it a lamp: the lamp is in a glass, the glass as it were a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east (i.e. neither it gets sun-rays only in the morning) nor of the west (i.e. nor it gets sun-rays only in the afternoon, but it is exposed to the sun all day long), whose oil would almost glow forth (of itself), though no fire touched it. Light upon Light! Allah guides to His Light whom He wills. And Allah sets forth parables for mankind, and Allah is All-Knower of everything.”  [Qur’an 24:35]

The first thing you need to do is to take a sheet of card, square in shape, fold it in half to make it rectangular and draw a horizontal line all the way across the length about 2cms down from the top edge. And then draw vertical lines drown from the horizontal line to the bottom edge in 2cm intervals.

 

Next cut along the vertical lines from the bottom edge all the way up to the horizontal line. Don’t cut any higher than the horizontal line otherwise it’ll fall apart.

And then when you unfold it out back to the original square shape it should look like this:

Then turn the sheet of card over and roll it into a cylinder until one edge meets the other and it should look like an old style lantern, like so:

If your lantern looks like this then it’s going well 😀

Next get some PVA glue and some coloured sequins and begin decorating the strips of the lantern. IMPORTANT: Leave one edge strip untouched. This will be used later on when the lantern is glued into it’s final position.

When all the glueing and sticking is done it should look something like this:

I should mention at this point that I think it would look more effective on black  or even dark grey card, but as we only had white card at the time, that had to suffice.

Leave the decorated card to dry properly for about 30 minutes so the sequins don’t start dropping off and sliding as can happen when kids get a bit generous with the PVA glue!

When it’s dry, roll it back around into a cylinder and glue one edge strip on top of the other edge strip to ‘close’ the lantern.

And when it’s dry, add a card handle and it’s done!! MASHA’ALLAH!!