Make a Vesak Lantern from Straws

Vesak is the full moons day in month of May and it's also the most important day for us Buddhists. In Sri Lanka Vesak Lanterns are a huge part of the Vesak celebrations, whole family get together in making them and everyone contributes in their own way, it's much like Christmas decorations. But with the busy lifestyles people have these days they tend to skip the fun part and simply buy a Vesak Lantern from roadside vendors, most of these are made from straws or other plastic materials. They are easy to make and takes less time too, so i thought making a tutorial on making one so next time you can make your own :).    

Ingredients 

1. 40 Straws
2. Pair of scissors 
3. tissue papers (2 color ones and 4 plain ones)
4. Glue.

Take 24 straws, cut them down to 8 inch pieces, smaller the pieces are smaller the lantern would be, but don't be greedy bigger ones are less stable and wobbly. so make it somewhere between 4 to 8 inches and make sure they are all in same size otherwise this won't work.

Take the other 16 Straws and cut each into 3 roughly equal pieces like in the second image. Take one of them and flatten it like shown in the image bellow then fold it vertically. Take two of those 8 inch pieces we made earlier and shove flatten piece inside and connect the two like in the image. 

Connect four of the 8 inch pieces together to make a square, we will need 6 squares to make our lantern. 

Now shove two flatten pieces into each corner a square and connect 4 squares together and connect the other two to the bottom and the top. if you do it right the result should look like this. 

Now all you have to do is cover this skeleton with tissue papers and hang some streamer,s just your imaginations. mine won't win any awards anytime soon but it's home made and it has character or i like to think it has :D but you can make a better one.  If you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comment section.