Halloween Luminary Lantern Craft Project

Halloween is the perfect holiday for dressing up the front pathway or front porch with unique luminaries. They welcome trick or treaters to your door and put everyone in the holiday mood. These luminaries are an easy craft project made out of simple and easy to find materials. Almost anyone with kids who brown bag their lunch and play outside in the sand box will have most of these materials already. Let the kids help you with this fun craft project and you’ll be ready for Halloween in no time!

To make the Halloween Luminary Lanterns you will need:

Brown Lunch Bags
Matte Knife
Sand
Black or Orange Construction or Tissue Paper
Leftover glass condiment jars or candle votive jars
Tea Light Candles
Piece of Cardboard cut to the size of your paper bag

To start this craft project you will need to do a little preparation. Cut a piece for cardboard to the same size as your paper lunch bag. You will insert this into each bag before you cut with the matte knife so that you don’t end up cutting through both sides of the paper bag. If you have a thin plastic cutting board, one of those flimsy kinds, they are easy to cut to size and perfect to use with this project.

Now that you are prepared you can start the craft project. Lay out your lunch bags, unopened. Draw you pattern on the front of the bag. Skeletons, jack o lantern faces, words, bat designs, and ghostly shapes all work well for the Halloween luminaries. Trace your design out with pencil. Once you have completed your designs you are ready to start cutting them out. If you are doing words, or anything that will have small pieces that you need, like the middle part of the letter o, make sure you keep up with those pieces. You will be able to reattach them to make your designs perfect.

Once the pattern has been cut out of your luminary you are ready to insert and glue in either some black or orange construction paper. I like to cut this colored paper out in a rectangle that just reaches past your cut out design. Use regular white glue or a glue stick to make an outline on the edge of the color paper and insert it into the inside of your paper bag. This will create some contrast with your paper bag while you candle is shining through the luminary. Tissue paper would also work well in the place of cardboard paper.

Now that you have your Halloween luminary completed you are ready to line your font walk or front porch with them. Place you bags in their desired position; fill them with about 2 -3 inches of sand inside. Make sure you put enough sand into each bag to make sure they are stable in their outdoor setting. If it is especially windy you may want to weigh your bags down with small rocks as well as sand. Sand is a great fire retardant for candles. Now, place a glass jar and candle inside of each. Your paper bag, construction paper, and the glass jar will keep your candle from blowing out in the wind.

For a twist on this Halloween craft project you could use white paper lunch bags and cut out ghost faces. You could also cut out words like “Boo,” “Enter at Your Own Risk,” and “Trick or Treat” onto the bags. For phrases cut one word out of each luminary. Stick with a theme and carry it out in each luminary bag for added visual impact. To replace carving out a bunch of messy pumpkins you could look for orange colored lunch bag sized bags and cut jack o lantern faces out of them. Use yellow construction or tissue paper inside. These are a great idea because you can empty them out, fold them flat and save them for next Halloween.