For my lantern project, I decided to do one of my favorite scenes from Howl’s Moving Castle where Howl is holding the “fallen star”. I thought that this would be a really good scene for a lantern because of the brightness of the star and the darkness of the rest of the scene. I used layered paper with different colors to create my design.

2/08/23 – At first, my idea was to laser cut all of the paper, but after the first four layers, the laser was not cutting the paper quite enough to take the pieces out. I did not realize this while I was in the lab, so I went and used a Cricut to do the top layers. Overall, I really like how the layered design turned out. The light shines through where I want it to and I think I got the box size correct for the look that I am going for.

I used a light board that I borrowed from a friend for my light source because my initial plan to use fairy lights did not work. I then uploaded Arduino code to the board to make it flicker and look like light that might come from a lantern/fallen star.

My next steps would probably be to make room for the cable for the light, fully build the box, and paint the box.

One question that I have about my project is what color would be the best for the box. I was thinking of doing either a black or dark blue but it might also look good with a lighter color.