Miniature Lantern Tutorial

Happy pre-Thanksgiving Y'all!  I promise I will eventually report on something other than miniatures... buuut it's just what I feel like sharing mmmk?

I recently posted pictures on my Instagram page of a cabin scene I made.  And in this precious scene were two lanterns that I made in a sort of jiffy.  The next day or two I thought... maybe this mini cabin person has a collection of lanterns... so I started digging for more beads and more buttons and along the way thought I'd show you!

I started by going through my old button stashes for bases, middles and tops of the lanterns.  For the bottoms I wanted more decorative and flat bottom buttons.  For the middle, ones that could support the round globe beads.  For the tops, something either domed or that had a hook resembling a handle.  Here are the ones that I found.

For more of my miniature tutorials click HERE.

Decorative bottom buttons.

Tops.

These are the beads I used for the globes or the lanterns.... I guess there are not pictures of the middles.  They are pretty plain.

Next I glued the middle buttons to the bottom base buttons, then the globe, then more middle buttons, and then the tops.  I used Elmer's Wood Glue.  It's my favorite go-to glue.  I didn't take pictures of the process of gluing.  I simply dip my favorite paint brush into the glue and dab it on a button the stack.  The important thing is to give the glue time to dry.  I'm bad about the patience part of this.  :)

After the glue has dried and set it's time to paint.  I just use normal craft paint.

Some of them need handles.  So I cut a piece of wire about one inch in length, bend it around a paint brush handle and bend the ends.  I then put glue on each bend and place where it belongs on the tops of the lantern.

Here are my results!  They aren't perfect and some of them aren't straight but that's how I like them.

This one sort of looks more like a hummingbird feeder to me.  So I guess that can happen too.

When I look through old buttons like this I always pick out the shell buttons and put them in a special jar.  I can always spot them.  They have a different kind of opal-ness to them in color and shine. Most of the time the backs of them are darker like sea shells, a lot of times they aren't level in their cut and they most always have a cooler temperature.  I like to touch them to my chin to make sure of the temp.  They are so pretty and I for sure don't want to use them in this project and paint over their natural beauty!  Check these pictures out of them.

This picture show the back sides.

They aren't always white in color.  I love these darker ones.  

The back of these is the picture above.

It looks like I've never gone through this tin of buttons and pulled out the sea shells.  

I'm certain there's more!

My morning sorting.

For more of my miniature tutorials click HERE.