I am planning to make my lantern out of cardboard and paper. The box will be made of cardboard and will have a hole in the front which will be covered in a layered paper deign. I am also thinking of maybe painting it black so that the main focus of the lantern will be on the image. The darker parts of the design will have more layers of paper which will make it so that less light shines through. The paper will also be colored to create an image.
To make my image, I took a photo of one of my favorite scenes from Howl’s Moving Castle and I imported it into Inkscape. I separated the layers by color until the image looked approachable for the laser cutter.
I am unsure exactly how I want to light the box so I have not included any holes yet. I am thinking of maybe using a bunch of fairy lights to try to get warmer colors.
Will the other side of the lantern have other designs? Maybe like in one side have small Calcifer or other characters from the movie?
I am planning on having only one side of the lantern have a design because I want the lighting to be mounted on the back-side of the box.
your design looks amazing! How do you plan on lining up “floating” features like the eye and eyebrow? For lights, you might want something stronger than fairy lights; I’m working with paper too, and it gets surprisingly opaque with many layers.
I am planning on opening the image on my computer as the size it will be and turn my brightness up so I can see through the white layer of paper and line up the floating features with the image on my computer. That is good to know about fairy lights. I am hoping that if I have enough of them volume-wise it will work. If not, I have a plan B to use a light that plugs into the wall and has different brightness settings.
Will this design wrap around the entire image or have multiple designs? I could see adding the light flashes around the lantern as well or stretching the image or adding multiple images.
My box will only have one image that is on one face. I want it to be kind of like a paper “screen” like how the movie would be watched.
What colors of paper do you plan on using?
I plan on using white for the base, then (in order) light orange, teal, burnt orange, grey-brown, dark teal, and navy. I bought a set of colored paper (not construction paper as that would be too thick) that has a lot of color variations.
What is your plan for adhering or attaching the paper to the cardboard?
I am going to superglue a white piece of paper to the inside of the box and then all of the other papers will attach to that so the white paper will be a background and mounting sheet.