This is our the space formerly known as the Playroom.  Now that my boys are older and only play with legos and roller blades and SCUBA gear and iPhones we don’t have that many actual toys.  But we still use this room a lot for guests and spend the night parties that the boys have.  So I want the space to be functional, kind of masculine but good for girls too, and great for guests.  It’s full of cast offs from all the other rooms in the house so mixing pattern and color was a natural way to make it look like it was planned that way.  When we moved in there was a big hole in the center of the ceiling–I’m guessing a ceiling fan went there.  And really, there are so many huge pot lights that we don’t need any more overhead lighting, but I wanted to do something besides just cover up the hole with a plastic cover.

Gabrielle Guy via Design Sponge

I was inspired by this light that I pinned from Design Sponge months ago.  So I scrounged around my house and I didn’t have a big huge paper lantern but I did find a small one.  Here’s what I had around my house::

Small paper lantern, hot glue, a roll of brown paper.  I didn’t want to have to buy white flat paper and besides, I figured it would be fun to see if the rolled paper would hold its curl.  It did…

Want to make one?  Here’s how::


 

This lantern took an hour and a half between both me and Karrie and was well worth it for the charm and interest it creates.  I imagine I could put a non getting hot lightbulb inside it, especially if I would have used a larger paper lantern base (I think I used a 12 inch lantern to start).  But we don’t need a light and I like it more as sculpture.