Great Expectations

These lovely – home made lanterns, which I promised you all I would attempt have been the topic of today’s crafty project.

So, after I set myself up good and proper, like any crafts-lady would, I happily began my lanterns:

The essentials:

- Newspaper to line my outside work area
- A bowl of water and equal parts craft glue
- 5 balloons, all blown up to different sizes
- 2 balls of string
- Rubber gloves
- Crafting playlist
- A head full of high expectations

Step 1 – Set up your balloon

After the epic fail I am about to explain, I have figured that the best way to do this is hang your balloon from something (I chose a ceiling fan).

Step 2 – Cover the string in glue

A fellow crafty blogger explained that the easiest way to do this was to put glue in between your fingers and run the string through it as you go. I decided I could come up with a much faster and much messier way; Plop the whole ball of string into the bowl of gluey water and pull it out as you wrap.

Step 3 – Start wrapping & keep wrapping

Start from the top of the balloon and turn it slowly whilst wrapping the string. This is the trickiest part. It may sound easy, but you need to keep the string tight or you will end up with sagging string and an odd shaped lantern.

So that’s it! Easy? WRONG!

My issues began when I got lazy (surprise surprise).

I placed my half covered balloon on the side of the bowl of gluey water, to enable me to re position my hands. Of course the bowl tipped, covered the newspaper, the table, my pants, the floor and the cushion cover of the chair I was sitting on.

Frozen, yet knowing I must act quickly, I hesitantly placed the balloon on the table, while I ripped my pants off and ran to the laundry room to grab a mop. When I returned to the gluey alfresco, my balloon had fallen to its death and the glue had taken over the majority of the floor.

“Go on without me!” the balloon shrieked, so in all my beige knickered glory, I ran down the stairs to the only hose I thought would reach; politely waved to the neighbour hanging his washing out and attempted to pull the hose around the corner, up the stairs and to the top of the alfresco area. As I pulled the hose from upstairs and wondered why it was SO difficult, I shortly realised the hose had become caught on the side of the garden fountain and I had managed to re-create the ‘Leaning tower of Pisa’ on a slightly smaller scale.

I finally realised that pulling the hose through the balustrading would perhaps have been the more logical idea and managed to start hosing down the floor, which of course lead to me flooding the entire alfresco, leaving Mums lovely floor mat floating off into the gluey corner.

With a sigh of relief as I finished the hosing, I let go of the hose, which flung back down through the balustrading, onto the bricks and smashed the hose knozzle to smitharines, leaving myself, my dog and the entire backyard basking in the lovely fountain that was, the broken hose.

So, 75 metres of string, 500 mls of craft glue, a pair of pants, 2 cushion covers, 1 popped balloon, 1 wet dog, 2 snotty remarks to Geordie after he told me that it really didn’t sound that difficult and a pretty lousy looking lantern later, I still have great expectations for my second attempt…

The lantern in question - in drying mode