This Little Light of Mine

     For the second marking period one of the assignments was to make a paper lantern that was inspired by a season. I took these instructions and shook them up a little. Instead of choosing a season I decided to portray a tree that was going through different seasons. My tree started out with an abundance of leaves then it started to loose its leaves and finally it was a tree with its bare branches. This idea of mine didn't come immediately. At first I was going to do the season of fall and have a tree loosing its leaves. I did eventually incorporate this idea into the final creation, but it did take some thinking. The actual creating part took some practice as well. Knowing how to use an X-Acto knife is key to making a paper lantern. Luckily for me I had this skill already locked down! My dad is an architect so he designs layouts for museums, sculptures, etc. and when I was little I would always want to cut with the x-acto knife, usually it was just a straight line, but I felt grown up using such a fancy tool. Eventually I got really good at cutting straight lines so my dad let me move on to curvy ones. I used an x-acto knife for all my school projects that required cutting, it just made everything look so clean. So for this project I didn't break a sweat when using the x-acto knife! The difficult part for me was figuring out how much to cut and where. It was hard to picture the negative space and what parts the candle light would shine through. Another problem I was running into was cutting too much, but Ms. Kiick let us practice before cutting on the final paper which was a life saver. 
     When I did figure out what to cut and what not to cut, I figured out not to cut anything out, just cut lines and then strategically connect the cuts I did want to have out. I finally found something that I liked. I cut my trees so that the branches were somewhat sculptural. Instead of cutting out my whole tree, which would show way too much light, I cut the trunk as two slits and the tree branches, but left them connected to the trunk. The end result was surprising in a good way. When putting my lantern around the candle is was so mesmerizing  The way the light flickered within the walls of my lantern was beautiful. I hope to make a lantern again, but next time I will include more intricate cuts. 

Picture of my lantern