Steps of water lamp practice

1. Making skeleton: The simple shape of paper lanterns is cube or cylinder. It is best to make a frame with flexible bamboo branches or bamboo skins, and the joints are tied tightly with thin lines. If it is difficult to find, you can also use slender cardboard and bamboo sticks for barbecue. The firmness and elasticity will be lacking, but it is also a good decoration indoors.

2. Put the bamboo in the steam room (or heat it for half an hour), then take it out and put it in the shade to dry, but it shall not be excessively dried or irradiated by strong light.

3. Peeling and cutting: Peel off the rough skin and cut the length of bamboo strips according to the size of lanterns.

4. Binding the skeleton: cross-weave the lamp caps and tie several bamboo rings on the lamp wall in the middle of the lamp caps.

5. Making the lamp body: Buy some white and red ordinary rice paper or golden rice paper in Four Treasures of the Study store, cut it into the length and width of the lantern skeleton, and then you can design your own patterns. Calligraphy, painting and paper-cutting can all be displayed on small lanterns. After pasting, you can also use narrow silk-like paper to wrap the edges up and down, which looks more elegant, much like ancient palace lanterns. If you are not good at painting and calligraphy, there is a simple method for reference. Use a thin paper to trace the desired words on the copybook, then overlap this thin paper with crimson rice paper, and use a single blade to dig out the handwriting. Remove the paper towel, and hollow handwriting will appear on the red rice paper. White rice paper is used as the lamp body, and red rice paper is pasted inside, which reflects candlelight or light from the hollowed-out place, and the effect is quite beautiful.

6. If the light source is placed indoors, just light an ordinary candle in the lantern; If you want to realize it, you'd better make a simple circuit with light bulbs and batteries. It may look a little rough, but it is unique to light lanterns on the Lantern Festival.

7. Brush the diluted slurry evenly on the surface of the skeleton, then paste cotton gauze, gently paste the cut gauze on the lamp holder, brush it again with a brush, and finally paste the second layer of glossy paper for lanterns (if there is no glossy paper, fine cotton paper can also be used). Note that the brush used to paste the batter must be clean, and the pasted paper must be pasted without seams to be truly pasted.

8. Dry: put the lanterns in a cool and ventilated place to dry.

9. Painting: painting or cutting and pasting: painting or cutting and pasting with personal patterns, such as figures, eight immortals, flowers and birds, ladies, etc.

10, writing: decide whether to write or not according to the situation after painting. When the pattern is completely dry, the lantern is finished.