Octopus candle shade
Back when the maker studio was open, I started a few different projects that I ended up putting aside when the pandemic shut everything down. I ended up filing a bunch of them away, but during spring cleaning came across one of them – this cute paper shade for an electric candle.
Of course, this is only for an electric (battery-powered) candle, because it’s just made of paper, but that’s not a problem for me, since in my room I am using a mix of electric and fire candles right now.
I started out by looking at different paper lantern designs online, but they were all super cute, and I wanted something a bit more gothic, so I popped into Adobe Illustrator to design this one with octopus tentacles!
Picking out all of the little pieces of paper from the octopus tentacle shade design
On the Silhouette Cameo paper cutter I cut out all of the elements, using scrapbooking (12×12″) cardstock paper in dark green, and used the scoring setting to mark in all of the fold lines. Removing all of the little pieces was incredibly tedious…. which is why I didn’t finish this off right away. Once I DID remove all of the excess pieces of paper I was ready to line the lantern with some vellum. I ended up using a photo-safe glue stick to add adhesive to the green cardstock, though if I had spray adhesive this would be far preferable to get all of those little pieces more accurately (and faster… I had to be SUPER delicate with the glue stick!)
Using a glue stick to prepare the shade to add in the velum pieces.
I used a green pearl velum to line each of the four sides with. This lets light through, but obscures the actual fake ‘flame’. I love this paper so much – I originally used it for the paper ferns and spider plants I made for my friend’s doll dioramas a while ago.
The tentacle battery-operated candle lantern in daylight (the candles are lit inside, but it isn’t super obvious)
Then, it was just a matter of assembling the paper shade / lantern, and popping in a few battery-operated candles!
With the lights out, the glowing battery-operated candle really shines through the velum in this tentacle shade
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