Tin Can Lanterns Homemade Christmas Ornaments

Christmas ornaments come in all shapes, colours and sizes. From the traditional golden glass baubles to those handmade paper snowmen your kid’s made in nursery school. Whatever we choose to decorate our tree with is special to us.

Each year I like to add something new to my tree. Oh I always end up buying something in the shops or at a craft fair, but I like to make something for the tree myself as well. Homemade Christmas ornaments are really special and can add that certain je ne c’est qua to your tree.

This year I have made these cute handmade Christmas ornaments out of recycled cola cans. Tin can lanterns are really cute and incredibly easy to make. I did these for my So Easy Christmas book but for some reason (he said it was dangerous for people to use scissors!!!) the publisher took it out. Anyway I thought I’d share my lanterns with you here. There are no step by step pix as this really is easy peasy.

Let’s Make Tin Can Lanterns

You’ll need some empty cola cans (those squishy aluminium type cans, not soup cans), so really these should be called Aluminium Lanterns, hmmm doesn’t sound quite right somehow, I’ll stick to Tin Can Lanterns I think.

Scissors

Strong stapler

Darning needle or skewer

Hot glue gun

Assorted buttons

Ribbon for hanger

Rinse out the cans and dry thoroughly. Now stab into the can near the top (be careful) and make a hole so that you can get the scissor blade in there and just cut the top right off.

Do the same with the bottom of the can.

You’ll now have a wide ring of metal.

Cut this straight down one side and flatten out the metal sheet you’ve made.

Trim the edges so they are nice and smooth.

Now fold the metal in half length ways and make snips from the folded edge towards the outer edge. Do not snip right to the end, leave a border of about 1cm/1/2 inch. Make your snips as close or as far apart as you like. A closer snip gives you fine bars on your lantern, wider snips give thicker bars.

Leave a border at either end of 1cm/ 1/2 inch.

Now unfold the metal and wrap it into a tube – note how I have the silvery side showing on my lanterns, if you had them the other way round you’d get the coloured and logo-ed can image showing. The choice is yours!

Using the stapler just staple the top and the bottom edges of the metal together where the ends meet on the tube.

Using the darning needle or skewer carefully poke a hole in either side of the lantern at the top border so that you can now thread through your hanger ribbon.

Heat up your glue gun and use this to stick buttons along the top and bottom borders of the lantern to decorate.

Slightly squish the lantern to get the shape you want.

Voila! You have just made your own homemade Christmas ornaments, a tin can lantern to dazzle on your tree!

Karon x