I love bats. I always have. Even as a little bitty demon I have always enjoyed watching them dance in the night sky, desperately wishing I could fly like they do.
While it’s true, some of my fellow hell-bound denizens do have wings, I am, alas, without. (They also have cloven hooves and horns, which makes wearing boots and hats difficult so I am ok with not having to have to share those traits with them!)
Fashion disasters aside, let’s get back to my favorite flying fuzzies.
To celebrate all thing bat as well as get rid of some trash cardboard I had around my house, I decided to make a really simple but surprisingly beautiful bat lantern the other day. I had just finished up a batch of harvest moon bat cupcakes so I had an empty cupcake mix box that was perfect for this project. You can use any cardboard you like but the box I used was easy to cut but still stiff enough to lend some structural integrity to the finished product. And…bonus, I recycled it.
All you’ll need to make your own is:
- 1 sheet of heavy duty black card stock
- 1 sheet of frosted translucent velum
- 1 empty cupcake mix box
- 1 sheet of bat stickers
- Spray glue
- Tape
- Scissor/exacto knife
- Electric candle
- Ruler
Start by first opening up your box and spreading it out flat. Trim off the top flaps and separate the box into the four panels that make it up, two large and two narrow. Get rid of the narrow, you don’t need them for this project.
Make sure your two large panels are cut to exactly the same size.
Next, cut them equally down the middle, creating four equally sized pieces. These will be the sides of your lantern.
Using your ruler, measure between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch inside your cardboard squares and cut out to create a frame shape.
Spray a layer of glue onto the printed sides of your cardboard frames and lay them onto your black card stock.
Using the now glued down frames as a guide, cut out the black card stock to match.
Tape all four segments together on your cardboard side along the long side of your frames to create one long, four panel strip. One side will be black from the card stock and the other side will be the raw cardboard.
Spray the cardboard side with more glue and press down onto your frosted vellum.
Now we get to decorate! Take your bat stickers and decorate the outside of your lantern in any pattern you wish!
Fold your sides towards each other to create a box and tape your two raw edges together. Place your lantern over your lit electric candle and enjoy your new super easy, super cheap lunar bat lantern!
This spring, take it outside at dusk, set it on a table, light it up, and enjoy the soft flickering glow…and if you’re lucky, you might even see a few real bats as well!
Now that we have our lanterns, why not make Sweet Orange and Chocolate Lunar Bat Cupcakes to go along with them?
Bone appetite!
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You are seriously SO creative! Your crafting/baking skills are top notch. I wish I’d had your blog to look to for spooky guidance back when I used to do my big annual Halloween bashes. So many wonderful ideas to marvel over!
And bats are so cute and awesome. I used to live in a city that was great for bat watching. My best friend and I lived in apartments in this complex that was next door to a cemetery of all things and our complex was always full of lightning bugs and bats at night. So we’d go sit out on the hills in our complex and go bat watching in the evening. There was one time we had her dog with us and he just so happened to drool on her shoulder and she’d thought for sure that a bat had pooped on her. lmao Oh, memories. 😛
I love that story! I can only imagine how beautiful that was with all the lightning bugs and bats. I am so jealous! I’m in Idaho right now so plenty of bats in the summer but no lightning bugs. I used to see them in Chicago when I was there and I always wished I could somehow bring them back with me.
And holy cow, the dog drooling made me laugh out loud at work. Thank you for that early morning giggle!
lol I’m glad you got a good laugh from the dog drool incident. 😛
Yeah, there aren’t a whole lot of lightning bugs around where I live now either. I miss them too.
That’s why I love the opening part of the Pirate’s of the Caribbean ride so much…they have these tiny fake lightning bugs that float over the water and it looks like magic. Someday I’m going to go to New Orleans in the summer and see them again. 🙂