Papercutting: Make a Festive Paper Lantern

1. 01 Introduction: Ready to make this? Welcome to your Christmas workshop. Hello, I'm Kylie, papercutting artist and author of Papercutting Tips and Techniques. Today, I'm gonna be teaching you how to cut and assemble your very own three layer papercut Christmas lantern. It's the same design as I teach in my in person workshops, just maybe with fewer tunics tea cakes. You can light it using a battery operated te light. Don't use a real candle. It's paper. Okay. Well, you pop it inside at the end, and it just looks divine. I'll be telling you about all the tools you need and the best paper to you, and I'll guide you how to use a scalpel as we work through a practice sheet together before cutting out and assembling our lanterns. Gorgeous. You can download the templates and cut along at your own pace. Grab yourself a cupper or maybe something mold, maybe some mince pies, and let's get cutting. Okay, gang, here's what you're going to need. You're going to need an A four cutting mat. Scissors can be useful for cutting around the circles at the end. I've used a single hole punch for these holes here. If you haven't got one, that's fine. I'll put the link in the description of this one. You will need a glue stick, and I use a little T to light it up at the end. You can get these. Again, I'll link in the description. Also to cut everything need your trusty scalpels. I use a fixed blade scalpel, a swan Morton three handle with a ten A blade, and I use a Fiskars swivel scalpel, which is a very fancy little swvely thing here. And then you've got your printouts. You've got your practice sheet here, so we go through that in a second. You've got your four, ten plates. You've got your base here. G to cut this out first. Leave that circle right to the end and then you've got your inner layer which is where the whole punch comes in with all the trees, and these are important to let the light through. You've got your middle layer is the houses, and you have your outer layer, which as you can see, is in two halves. That's so because not everyone's got an A three printer, so it's actually handy to have it in two halves so that you don't have to worry about having to print it out on A three. We've got it all fitting nicely onto A four and they all slot in together. Now, the paper I use is a GF Smith, bright white. Color plan. It's 120 GSM. The practice sheet, I've just printed out normal standard, 100 gram printer paper. This is a silk. It's slightly posher than your normal sock standard, 80 GSM. Just silk paper. That's nice for practicing. I would recommend getting something slightly meatier, but don't go above 135 grams your main template. It does need to be sturdy. You could make it out of office paper, but it might look a bit flimsy. Slightly thicker a weight of paper will give it that rigidity. It's really worth getting 120 grams, if you can. Don't go over 135 because then it starts to really hurt. We're not talking cardboard. You really struggle and your hands are really hurt when you cut in cardboard. Okay? All right. Let's get going with the practice sheet. 2. 02 Let's Practice: As you can see, I'm left handed. Right handed people can do it too. But if you're left handed, don't let that worry you. I hold it as I would a pen. I don't hold it as if I'm chopping a cucumber. I hold it the normal grip. Now, it's important when you hold it to not put your finger on this bit. Although it's not the blade, it's going to really dig into your finger, hold it on the handle. Now, you can put some sticking plaster round there to make it a little bit nicer to hold. Sometimes also pencil grips, you can get foam pencil grips, pop them over the top, and then also makes it nice to hold to make sure you're holding the handle. Okay, we're going to start off by cutting these lines here. We're going to start at the top of the line. I've got a nice comfortable 45 degree angle. I'm not cutting it on the very length of the blade and I'm not holding it like that and cutting at the tip of the blade. So a nice comfortable 45 degree angle on the table, and we always cut towards ourselves. I'm pushing the knife in and I'm slowly cutting through. Don't worry about coming off the line, practicing the pressure we need actually to get through, you cut that lovely line. And then we're going to do the zig zag. First of all, let me demonstrate what not to do with your zig zag. What I don't want you to do is this. What I want you to do and get into the habit of is moving the board so that my hand is not really moving angles. What I'm doing is I'm cutting at the same angle. I'm moving the paper and the board. I'm meeting where I ended the cut, lifting the blade up, moving the board, picking up where I met, and moving all the way down like that. The reason I say we need to pick up the blade is because you don't want to be inadvertently getting used to doing that when you move it because you could gouge your papercut and you don't want that. As you can see, I've got to the end. If any of your points on your zig zags are still touching, I recommend turning the paper over so you can see where they join and then just nicking that little bit off. What I don't want to see is pulling. You don't want to get into the habit of pulling your papercut. We don't want that. Now it's time for some swively action. Here's my little swivel. I ignore this claw and I hold it in the crook of my thumb like this. Holding firm on the gripper, I don't come down further, I hold on the gripper. The blade, it moves round and round and round. As you approach the paper, it might be upside down. It will find its own way as soon as you put the blade onto the paper and then it'll go the right way. Then you're free to move it as you would. Now, let me demo that. I might need to get a bit closer. I'm going to show you to the side of this line. Even if that's upside down, it doesn't matter. Push it down and it will find its own way around. Okay? And I'm showing it who's boss, and I'm moving. I'm very careful. I'm moving it with my hand as I go. Okay? You can almost sketch with these like that? Or you can just go who like that. Okay. That's quite cool, isn't it? Now, likewise, if you haven't got one of these, don't stress. Let's do it with a fixed blade. Right. So what you're going to do is on the line, I'm showing you off the line because I've sliced right through it. You can just go in tiny little increments, just slowly following, moving it with your hand. Okay? And that should still give a lovely line. Okay? So if you haven't got one of these, do not fret my sweeties. Either will do, but I like to use this one for intricate little things really handy when we come to these. I'll be using these when we come to these, but I'll also be demoing in this. But these are my two babies that I love very much. This for straight lines, this one for detail and curves. Right. Let's do some shapes. Let's talk about some slits. The slits are important because on every single template, you've got the little slits here. This is where they attach, where they may fold in on themselves. Also, they are underneath. So when you look at the base, there's the slits. Let's look close. You can see they are actual rectangles. What I don't want is a slit where it's just a cut. You will really struggle to assemble this. If your slots are slits and not slots, we need some proper slotty action. You've got a big one here to practice to show that it is an actual slot and not a slit. Let me show you what I mean. I like to cut one side, followed by the other side. Then you have to move it around. Now, you cut the tiniest little bit. We don't want to overlap because we don't want to cut into the white, okay? Because you'll see that. So what we're going to do is just a very tiny, tiny little start and finish and then stab that shape out. How lovely. Right. Let's try it at the actual size now. As you can see, I'm moving it back to the nice angle of my hand. I'm going to come in close, and we're going to go slice Slice. Okay? Turning it round. And we're gonna go plop. I'm almost pressing 'cause it's so tiny. Whoa. Look at that beautiful slit. Those will go slitting into these, if you know what I mean? Let's talk stars. The stars are important on these. They let the light through. When your candle is in there, it will show through. Okay. Oh, you can see it flickering. How cool. Okay, because the stars are part of the design. We don't want to cut out into the white 'cause you'll have a nasty little I'll show you what? I mean, we don't want to do that. And that because you would see that in the design. We don't want that at all, do we? In that way, we need to control the cut, start at the tip and come down. The gray is getting thrown away so we can cut into the gray. Start. Top, come down into the gray. Move the star around, start at the point, come into the gray, you can crisscross into the gray, start at the top, come down. I've already done that one because that was the demo how not to do it. Turning it round each time. Pop. Oh. Oh, that's attached there. So instead of pulling, I'm going to just nip. So as you can see, the demo of what not to do, that would result in not a very pretty star. So that's why we don't want to crisscross into the point. We start at the point, we criss cross into the gray because that's going in the blinking bin. Now there's a little practice one to do at actual size. You'll be a wizard stars by the end of this template. Beautiful. There we go. Let's talk about the hole punch. This hole punch is a singular hole punch, probably about about seven pounds or something, and it comes with various different sizes of the holes. It gets attached by that. That goes in on top of that, screws tight. And when you use it, push down vertically. It's very satisfying. It hasn't quite gone over the first time. Grab your fixed blade scalpel and just cut where it hasn't, yeah. Let's talk houses. There's lots of little windows to cut on this third layer here. So let's practice on the practice sheet. There's different ways to cut the windows according to how much time you've got, how intricate you want it, how confident you feel of cutting lots of tiny little ones. So as you can see, I've got a dotted line where you can completely ignore the whole window frame and just do a big square hole. Or you can just add those two together and have more of a sash window or you can cut each of the panes of glass. It's totally up to you. Let's start with this semicircle here and I'll show you how I go about it. So up there, but because it's white here and we're throwing the gray away, I'm not cutting either side of this. I'm trying to keep my cuts just on there. Now, if you're on a fixed blade, you can just gently go round there. I'm going to do this bit with my swivel because I like it. I did half the circle there towards me, and then I'm going to move where I'm comfortable to get the same angle of my hand. Stop where I stopped, and just come and join up stop. Windows, I like to do all of the lines in one angle and then move the paper and do the other ones to the stab it out. I'll do the other two sides, one, two, stab. Very satisfying one. Two apologies for the wobbling here. One, two Sabby, stabby. Love it. I'll show you what I mean by the others. So one, two, turn it round. One, two. Now, you see here where I didn't quite cut the line off? It doesn't matter. Really, because when we assemble it, that will be the back. So you're not going to really see it. So don't stress. I mean, you could neaten it up if you wanted to, you can always shave tiny little bits off. If you're shaving little bits off, use your fixed blade scalpel and not the swvel scalpel because it just keeps it in control a little bit more. Right. Let's do the little sash window. So I've joined the two up together at the top, but kept the ones at the bottom as two separate panes of glass. Again, apologies for the wiggly camera. Blue Peter never had this problem, did they? They probably had a good camera man. Oh, no, look, I've ruined that one. I'd sooner ruin the practice sheet than ruin the real thing. You know what I mean? Right, they're done. Now, what do we do with that, it's totally up to you. You could leave it. You could put a tiny bit of Sellotape there. You can cut the bloody thing off. Boom. It's like it never happened. Dorway I've moved the board to a comfortable angle. I'm going to just do like I did the arch window. I'm going to start there and come to the middle of the door, and then I'm going to move around to a nice comfortable angle. I'm going to pick up where I left off, and I'm going to just come round like that. I've just done the arch. And then I'm going to put that down, pick up my fixed blade, and I'm going to pick up where we left off to do the nice straight lines down and down before going right the way around the edge. One. Oh, my God, I complete that's better, Kyle. Thank you very much. And then that one turning it round. There's a lot of swizzlin round. Okay. We're nearly there going. Are you keeping up with me? How's it going? How's that mulled wine going, anyway? Finished it yet. Don't cut yourself. Alright, little chimney. So the way I do this, I'll go up, up. Now, a little boozy bit. I could have just made that, you know, straight chimney, but I wanted a little brick bit at the top. Do you know what I mean? Extra little tiny bits just make all the difference in terms of detail. See? Cute. I mean, it's just a practice sheet, so we don't need to worry. Right. Let's practice some tabs. These are the tabs that go into these. Okay. So you have to make sure that these are pretty accurate. You can go lousy goosey on some of the shapes and stuff, but these need to be accurate. The way I approach these tabs is I'll start with the inner slits. One, two, one, two, and then while I'm here at this angle, I might as well do that. Then I'm going to turn it around. Then at the tiniest, tiniest little bit thereof Poof, slice slice, slice, slice, and then the other bits. In this instance, it will be your design, the rest of the template. It's important that that is a rectangle. I don't want that just to slit, otherwise, you're going to really struggle trying to thread that into your slots. Okay. Slots and slits, guys, slots and slits. Right, trees. As you can see, there's rather a lot of trees, but they look so good, so you really do need to master them. I'm going to be using the swivel blade, but you can also use a fixed blade for this. I'm going to start this way 'cause I'm left handed. You might want to start that way. If you're a tighty righty, I'm a lefty wirdo, so I'm doing this. Right, I'm starting at the tip, and I'm coming down. Can you see what I'm doing? I'm cutting I'm loosely following the loosely following need a steady cam. Again, don't worry too much. If you snarl up this bit, the gray's going in the bin, okay? So cut, cut. Also, some of that, you can see I've made that branch smaller, that branch bigger. It doesn't matter because this will be the inside. You'll see the inside of your lantern. Now, when you've got all one side of the tree, you then section it out, so you go actually going to cut that off and then cut to that, so you take that little corner off, you see. But that's what I mean by section. So you come up here like that. And then for the purposes of this template, this practice sheet, we're just going to take that off here. Look at that. She's a beauty. There's your tree. So we cut down that side, and then we turn it round, we do the same to that side before coming up here, section that and take that middle bit off, and then I'm going to leave you two this bit. And then we do the other. Again, from the top down, do do do do do do do do do. And then you're done. And then you'll be ready for your template. Oh, forgot about the snowman's arm. It's a gnarly little thing. So I'm going to use. It's quite little as well. So instead of using this, which can be a little bit too wiggly for tiny, tiny branches like this, I'm going to cut with the fix blade and go a bit wobbly. Let me show you. So I'm going to just sort of wobble as I cut because it's a stick. I'm not cutting that end off just yet. I'm going to do all the ends and then because it keeps it flat on the paper for longer so it doesn't get like a dying spider. That's all the lines cut, and then right at the end, nip off the little fingies. In there. There's your snowman's arm. For those that need a bit more practice on the trees, let me just show you again. Coming round to meet this other side now. I told you it got n, it gets gnarly. No scribbly. If that's annoying you, you can just just bloody get it off. There me. Nearly at the top. Slice it off. And hopefully, if there's definitely something attached, turn it over and see where it's attached. You don't want to start going pulling off your branches. Oh, that mine came off. But I mean, even if you did, you could always just neaten them up like that. Trees are starting to look like trees. We've just got to come down one more side. The gently there yeah. Now, you can go back and do your little extra bits, last little bits. They are, guys. Your practice sheet should look like this. You might have some beautiful trees. You might have Olaf's arm. You practice, your slips, your slots, you're stars. You're all ready to go. Let's go. 3. 03 Cutting the Inner base and inner layer: Right, so we're going to start with the lantern base. The rest of the templates can just be put to one side for a minute. And what we're going to do is we're going to cut just this circle. This one, the base B, we use right at the end, okay? I'm using my fixed blade. What I'm going to do? What I find is easiest is to cut each of these little slots, all of the lines in one go like that. All of those in that angle, and then I'm just simply going to turn around. I mean, you could finish them off there as well, but I just do all of these, and then go round and knit them off. So either way is fine. It doesn't matter, so long as you've got a decent decent rectangle. Okay? So it doesn't matter so much at the moment if you go over the lines a little bit, but do try to keep them a little bit accurate. After I've done all of those, actually I'm going to speed that bit up. No one needs to see me doing that. If only I could cut that fast in real life? I only. I'm just going to go round. I'm not using a swivel scalpel because this really sweeping curve. I find a fixed blade scalpel gets a smoother line because with a swivel scalpel, it could go everywhere. For sweeping curves like this, I stick to the old fixed blade. And there we are. There's your base. Those slots are looking mighty fine. Right, so we don't need that anymore. I mean, we do need it. Don't throw it away. We won't need that till the end and that till the end. So just going to put that aside. We are going to start with the inner layer. If you've got a hole punch, now's the time to use it. If not, I mean, you could use a swivel scalpel and cut little circles out. I'll show you how to do that in a minute. If you've got one of these, then, let's go. That's a teeny teeny tiny little hole though, but it's just big enough to fit over one of these circles that's on here, okay? So I'm going to go ahead and push all of them out. A all those holes looking good? No, I was going to show you how to do a hole with the swivel scalpel, isn't you haven't got a single hole punch. Let me get a bit closer. I'll show you on the edge of this template. So what you're going to do? Now, I'm left handed, so I'm coming this way, but if you're right handed, then you'll come this side. I'm going to do the circle in four little quarters. Okay? One round Another quarter. Round. Another quarter. Round. Bit fiddly, but it can be done like that. The next thing we're going to do, so I'm gonna put that down. Pick up my fixed blade. We're gonna cut the windows at the bottom, and we're gonna cut our lovely slots. So I meet it back here. Right. There we go. What we're going to do next are the trees at the top. Remember the practice sheet. We're going to come along one edge and with a view cutting off here, and then we'll cut off up here. All of these can be taken in little sections. We'll do this section first, this corner, and then we'll do that one, slicing up here, and then this section, et cetera, all the way along. Okay. That's so close to the edge, I could just do that. But the other ones, I'm just going to cut the way up loosely loosely following the shape of the branches on the template. Now, I'm going to cut off here, and that should all come off. Good. So the next section we're going to do is gonna cut down here, okay? And then cut down here and then slice that bit off there. Okay. So does that all make sense? I'm gonna speed myself up and go all the way along, kind of cut in little sections off as I go until we get over to here. And then it's just a case of round round the square bit with a fixed blade. And then your first template will be done. Let me speed myself up and do the trees. Let's go. There we are. Last little bit. Eagle eyes among you will have noticed that I kind of trimmed some of these branches. They just looked a bit big to me. They were all touching like that one. Doesn't even notice, is it? So I'm just going to say, you can go ahead and kind of change some of the branches, should you wish. It's not going to notice. Right. Next thing we're going to do is all around the edge. All around the edge with the fixed blade scalpel. So if you remember the practice sheets. We did the inner of the tabs, didn't we? So one line, the next line. One line, the next line. And then while I'm here, I might as well do all the lines in that angle because that makes it easy before turning it around. Oh, missed that one, didn't I? Before turning it around and doing the other edges, the other angle, sorry. There we are. Boom, boom, boom. Just to say as well, get these quite accurate. If they're too long, if you accidentally cut them too long, they're not going to fit through your slit your slots. They're not going to fit through these, be accurate with these. If anything, if you're going to cut them wrong, cut them a little bit shorter rather than longer. But you're going to be on the lines anyway, guys, aren't you? Because you're so bloody good. Right, that bit off. Swize the rest of this. And these bottom ones, these bottom tabs here are what fit into. You've guessed it. They fit into these holes here. So this one that we're cutting now fits into the middle circle of holes, and then the next layer goes into these, the next layer goes into these. It's important that these are good size because if you cut them too big, they're not going to fit in there, and you're going to have trouble assembling. But, we don't need to have a ruler. Just do it. There we are. Jack your paper around, Kyle. There we are. Boom. Your first template. It's done. I gonna keep these all flat for now? It's handy to keep them all flat until you're ready to assemble them cause otherwise, they could get a bit damaged. So we're gonna keep that one nice and flat. Pop it on top of the rest. There, put it to one side, and let's make the next one. 4. 04 Cutting the middle layer: You've guessed it. The middle layer is the next one we're going to cut. First things first, though, we're going to do more of the holes and the stars. We don't want to cut all the way around the outside and then do the holes. With it all cut out, you haven't really got much to hold onto. We're going to do the holes first, which includes the windows, and then we're going to do the top followed by the rest. Let's do all of the holes first with matrustyHle punch. Now, I've got a little weeding out tool, which helps getting out all of the little bits of paper that get stuck in there. A little needle we'll do. Try and push it through with something. Something sharp and pointy. Let's get holing. Right, so with the holes done, let's clean our workstations, guys. Don't get messy. With the holes done here, I'm gonna then do all of the stars. And then I'm going to do the windows, and then I'm going to do the slots. Alright. Let's go. That didn't take long, did it? Or did it? Are you cursing me now 'cause there's so many bloody stars. It'll be worth it, guys. It'll be worth it, I promise you. Right, there we go. Who's ready for some windows? Yeah, should actually should we do the slots first? Let's slot it out. Come on. There you go. In my Christmas workshops. Even though I said about how you can simplify the windows and just make them big squares or turn them into sash windows. Absolutely. Every single person wants to cut the entirety of all the little window panes. I admire that to be fair. It does look good. It is worth it. So if you can, fantastic. If you can't, that's fine too. I thought I'd mention it just in case you did want to simplify them. I'm going to speed myself up doing these, but I'll slow myself down when I'm doing that circle one and we've practiced an arch window. Let's do the windows. When you get to this middle house, both middle houses, actually, let me just bring you closer. Let's talk about these lintels because they can be a little bit fiddly. I'll show you how I do them. This one up here underneath this arch window is the most fiddly, because it's teeny tiny. It's almost like doing a teeny tiny slot. Let's do the inner line first and then the outer line and then just nip them off. Init, tiniest little almost just pushing the blade. Then that should come off. These other three in this house, what can look a little bit extra a nice detail is to angle each end as a lintel would be in a house. Let me show you what I mean by that. Instead of going straight down, just going to go a tiny little angle like this. Let me show you on that one. Can you see it's not straight down. It's a teeny tiny angle, which then is more like a lintel would be. And that's all the little extra bits of nonsense that would be fun. It's likewise for these. I'm gonna speed you up now, like Bucks fizz would say. Oh I'm just going to talk about this window now. We're going to cut it in four quarters. So one quarter, turn it around. The next quarter, turn it around. Pick up where you left off. The next quarter, turn it around. And stab it out. There we are. One more house to go. And then we're home and dry. There we are. That's looking good now, eh? Whoa. Right. Okay, so as we did with the trees, we're gonna section it off so we can start anywhere. And use the tips of the things to slice it off. For instance, we'll go there and we can go right the way you can bring it up to here or you can go use the trees as sections. We'll take that corner off from here right around these houses, the edge of that one tree, and then slice up here. Then that's corners off, and then come down that tree around these down that tree, slice up there, take the middle section off, and then the last section, followed by around the outside. Let's speed it up. Has everyone got enough snacks? Has everyone got enough drinks? Are you enjoying yourselves? That's the most important thing. Let's go. There we are. Run the outside now. And that's the second template done. There we are. Well done. Good work. Right. So we gonna put that with the rest of our gang. And also that last one. Don't forget that over there. Just these two little beauties to go now. 5. 05 Cutting the outer layer: Remember to take a break, give your hands a rest. Maybe have a tiny dog to cuddle, or a big dog, any dog or a cat. Now, can you get back down? I've got cutting to do. Right, so I'm going in with a whole punch. This time, we've also got the Snowman's eyes and buttons, which if you want it to be extra, you can switch to a different size. Let's do the stars next on both of them and the slots, and then we're going to take each one separately. Top first, followed by the bottom. But at the moment, the stars and the slots we can all do right now. Go. So once all your stars are done, then it's time to do the car. Star before car. What we need to do is the underside of this car, the wheels and the windows, and then we can cut the rest of it. So as you can imagine, with the wheels, it's exactly like we did the circle window. So we're going to take them in four quarters like a little pizza, one, two, turning it round as you go so that you're not getting any weird angles like that. I think it's time I changed my blade, actually. And the other one like that. That's not that circular. I'm gonna shave a tiny bit off. I'm going to go in with my fixed blade to shave a bit off. That's a bit better. Oh is where you get bigger and bigger holes. All right, I'm going in underneath the car, and this bit comes up here. Around the wheel. Round this wheel. And then along the base. There we are. Now, for the windows, it's pretty much like how you've already done the sides of the tree. So we just do the little branches of the tree that's sticking out over the top of the windows, and then you do the rest of the windows. Do the tree first, little branches first, and then round the window whatever car this is like that. Then the other one There, yeah. That's the tree done. We can do the rest of the top now. I think I'm going to take this corner off, and then I'm going to come around here. I might take it up there and then do this next corner. But also, actually, what you can do to make it a little bit easier than swizzling it all round, is you can chop off one half. Now, be careful when you get to this bit. You don't want to chop the end of that tree off or the snowman. But I've just taken that bit off. I'll put that to one side so I can concentrate on this top half. Okay. Amazing. Right now we just go around the outside. There we are. The penultimate one. We've got one more left, and then it's assembly time. I'm going to show you how you can be a little bit extra with this squirrel's tail. Okay. So a little bit like you would do the Christmas tree, but they would have tiny little tiny, tiny little bits of hair coming up here, wouldn't they? Do tiny little like you did with the tree, but tiny little branches just on the underside of the squirrel's tail. Because then when you cut it out, it'll look more realistic. So let me show you that what I mean? Right, there we are. For that, you see. Then we've got a bushy tail. You don't have to do that at all if you want to. But that's the way you can be a bit extra. Remember, on the practice sheet, we did the little snowman's arm. Well, we've got two to do this time. I'm gonna use fixed blade for this one. And, gosh, it's even smaller, would you believe, than on the practice sheet. So just come up. Remember, we're not going to do the fingers yet. We're just going to do just the little branchy bits. Can't hardly see them, but I'm just kind of there. I haven't trimmed off the end yet. I'm going to do that in a minute. Once I've done the rest of it, I'm going to come back and nip them out because otherwise they could start curling up. I'm just going to leave them flat and do the other arm but not do the ends of the fingers. Similar thing. Then I go around the rest of it quickly and then I'll nip it off. Now, you might have noticed I went I didn't cut. I didn't cut down the snowman and then come towards the arm because it's so tiny, I could have inadvertently cut that off. So what I did was I turned it around and started at the arm and then came down, and then turned it around and then started at the arm and then came up. So I wasn't cutting towards the arm either of those times. Just in case. Right. Let's chop off the fingers. That sounds nasty. And then that should all come away. There we are. Quick round the outside. And then it's assembly time. There we go. We're all done. So we have all of the templates ready to go. I think it's assembly time. Refill your glasses, maybe have a lou break, maybe get some snackets. But either way, you're gonna need to grab your glue and let's get ready to assemble. 6. 06 Assembling your lantern: Some scissors later, and you're definitely going to need your glue stick. We're going to grab our base. Put that base to one side. I hope you still got it. What you need first are the trees. So there will be a definite front and a back to your template. So you might be able to see the odd bit of gray around the outside where you cut it away. So that will become the inside of the lamp. So with that in mind, with the trees, I can see that there's bits of gray on this side, and this one is this must be the front one. So with the trees pointing towards me, we're going to just fold it back in on itself. Now, what we're not going to do, we're not going to go like that and push the tabs through these holes here like that because it would give a teardrop shape. Instead, I'm coming over and in to these slots. Sometimes it's better to go onto the cutting mat or just a table and bend round. This is where we hope that our slots and our tabs are accurate. There we are. Now, once they're all in, simply push down, pull it there to lock it, and then that should even up. If that's a little bit higher, then you'll know that you can just pull it just to lock it in there. So there's your first template all rolled round on itself. These tabs at the bottom will fit into this inner ring of slots. Push them all in to make sure that they all fit in properly, and you've cut your tabs and cut your slots with great accuracy. So you can see they all fit in there. We want to glue them out. Each one needs to be glued out and not in. The reason I say that is because you can't get purchased. You can't hold on to that middle bit very easily, but you can hold on to push each of those tabs down with the glue on. What I find so I know they fit, so I can take them off. But what I find is easier to make sure bend round easy as I just bend and release, bend and straighten, bend and straighten, bend and straighten, each of these tabs. That way, when they go in, they will bend round easily where I want them. Now, because I know they fit and because I've bent them now is a very good time to take the lid off your glue stick, otherwise, you're holding your template, and you haven't got a spare hand. So get your lid off ready and then pick up your template back up again and just put one tab in. So I'm holding one tab. I know the rest fits because I tried them. So a bit of glue on that tab and then fold it out on itself like that. Okay? It won't cover the other hole if you've cut correctly. I just find it's easier to get one in and then do the rest. Okay? So I'm going to then push the rest of these in. They've gone in quite nicely. Glue one in, push the rest in, and then glue the opposite one then coming out. Push that against that. I'm holding it like that. And then I'll just glue the rest. Generous with the glue. The last one. There we are. First layer done. Put that to one side and grab our lovely houses. Now, I need to figure out which one was the front and which was the back. I think that was the gray side. So I'm going to make sure that that's the outside. So again, push it round with our hands, line up all the tabs with the slots, push through. And then, as you can see, that's lined up. So we just pull to lock. And I'm going to fold, release all of these. Okay. There we are. Now, let's grab the lantern again, and it's a good idea to line up the seams. So I can see this seam is here. This seam is here. So when I push it over the top, I'm going to make sure that that seam is lined up. As you can see, you can see one seam there, one seam there. And now I'm going to go ahead and push all of these in and make sure that they fit. Now it's a case of gluing one. Glue one there, and then the opposite one, just to stop them all falling out. I'm gonna go ahead and do the rest of them. Your nail does get a bit gluey. I get a bit gloyOn on your nail. Oh, my God. I can use that glue on there. Yeah, get your Christmas manicures done after this crafting. Alright, ladies. And gents. Right. That's looking good. Even that on its own would look great, wouldn't it? But no, we're gonna make it even greater. Put that to one side, get the glue off your nail. Actually, it is a good idea to get your hands clean. The next layer, we've got the snowman and the car. So this is the gray side. You can see that some of them have Bs. There's B. You need the B slots to line up with the B tabs, leaving the A's for now, okay? So with the Bs in the middle, what I want you to do is I want you to come in like that with the B tabs. So they're facing you, because this is gonna be the back because we don't want to see that, do we? And then turn it round, make sure that looks all lined up properly and lovely. Then I'm going to bend it round in on itself. To put the A tabs through the A slots. You could say A holes. They're going to do the same with these fold and unfold, fold, and unfold, fold and unfold. Now, what about the seams, I hear you cry? Well, on this one, it's nice to put the seams at the side. You've got the two back seams together. I quite like placing the car in front of the houses there. So you've got the back there. There's the front. I'm going to put the car over the top. You have to be very careful. Get it over the top. Don't get it caught up on any trees. So then that is just a case of, again, making sure that the tabs all fit. They all fit, so I'm gonna glue one. Stick it on. So as you can see, they've all come out in front of each other. Loads of space. Now I'm going to get the rest in. And my last tab. Great. Make sure they're all pushed down tight. And there you have it. Straighten out any trees that might have got bent. And that's how we're looking. Look at that. Right. Base time. So let's put that to one side. Grab our base. I'm just going to cut this bit off. And I'm going to put a generous amount of this glue all over the base. And then we grab our lantern, and we line up the sides, line up the edges, push down. And then it's just a case of cutting around the edge with some scissors or a scalpel. And there it is. So now the bottom's all lovely and covered up. And it's looking gorgeous. The last thing to do is pop your little tea light in. Once again, don't use real candles. Okay, that's very important. I'm gonna pop that on. Literally just drop it down in. Now, you can't see that until the dark. So we'll come back in the dark and have a look at that. A little tip about fitting them into these lovely big glass cloches from our favorite Swedish meatball emporium is take it off the base and get your lantern onto the cutting that. Put your glass cloche over the top, sometimes it doesn't quite fit the base. So just take a pencil have the right here and just drawl around the glass and cut around again with your scissors. And then that then should fit your base better. And then it's time to pop up on the mantelpiece. Congratulate yourself on a job well done. Enjoy. Merry Christmas, everyone.