How To Make Tin Can Lanterns

My 8 year old daughters school is running a young entrepreneur stall at the Christmas fete.  Abbi has embraced this completely.  Ideas were... shall we say... enthusiastic.    After much "brainstorming", she finally settled on making and selling Tin Can Lanterns.  There are loads of images and suggestions for these on other websites - I cant remember where I first saw them.  Basically you need:

Materials:  Tin cans, pen & paper, masking tape, paint.

Tools: Hammer, nail, pliers, gloves, safety goggles.

We scrounged tin cans from all our friends recycling bins, washed them, filled them with water and froze them.  To punch the holes, we tried first using a power drill, however we found it was faster to punch the holes with a hammer and nails.  

For some of the designs we just taped randomly around the can.  For others we drew simple pictures of stars and hearts on paper, wrapped them round the can with masking tape, and tapped out the holes.

Its best to start at the top of the can, as the ice starts to chip out.   Place the frozen can on a towel to stop it moving around.  We wore cycling gloves so we could get a good grip, and didnt get ice burn.  

Initially I made my daughter wear safety goggles.....(but perhaps that was a bit over cautious).Once the cans were filled with holes, we crimped the inside of the can with pliers to remove the sharp edge.  

This made the cans look a bit like....well tin cans with holes in, so we painted them, and added a handmade label.

Tin Can Lanterns

  

Hurrah - Stock for our stall with almost zero outlay.  They could have done with a couple more coats of pain, but we ran out of time.

Abbi is selling these items with her friend this weekend.  Lovely girls that they are, they are giving all profits to Great Ormond Street Hospital.  Ill post how they get on after the weekend.

UPDATE:

 

Abbi made the logo for her stall (Lolipops), which we made into t-shirts for her and her friend Sienna.  

They only had 1 hour to sell their stock (and the room was so crowded nobody could move in the classroom)  Despite that, they made £23, which we will donate to GOSH  Great Ormond Street Hospital before Christmas.

The girls were meant to be learning about commerce, and profits etc....not sure they learned much, but they had loads of fun selling the Tin Can Lanterns to their friends.