Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Weekend craftiness: part 2


OK, I'll admit it - this one is a mummy craft, something I've been wanting to try ;-)

I first spied this tutorial for mandarin lantern at the Lucy Patterson Hands-on blog a while ago and fell in love with it. But of course we had to wait for mandarin season, and you also need those lovely specimens with the thick but slightly detached from the flesh skins, if you know what I mean!



So you basically carefully cut around the middle of the mandarin, and gently remove the skin from the flesh, leaving two pieces. Then cut a hole in the top section (to act as a chimney).

Using what's left of the 'stalk' of white pith attached to the base, squeeze and trim it to act as a wick, put some vegetable oil in the base, light it and place the top section on.



It took us a couple of goes to firstly get the flesh away from the skin without breaking it, and then to get the 'wick' the right size/shape to burn, but it was lots of (nerdy) fun and great when it worked. We lit up our mantle in the lounge room with the beautiful orange glow.

Do check out Lucy Patterson's tutorial, she say it all much more eloquently than I do, has full instructions, lots of pretty pictures and a mandarin-eating dog :-)



Now I just wish we had mandarins available at halloween and Christmas... but we'll have to leave that up to you Northern Hemisphere dwellers out there!

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