DIY wedding doily lanterns

In looking around for ideas for reception decorations, I saw several sites discussing the use of doilies for making lanterns or lamps. So after consulting with my niece, that is what we decided to do for her wedding. The goal is to make approximately ten doily lanterns in ivory, red and yellow in different sizes which will hang at different lengths from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Then, ivory fabric will be draped from the middle of the ceiling to the walls. There will be tea lights in the doily lanterns. Combined with the candle centerpieces, this will look very romantic and beautiful, I hope.

I read up on how to stiffen doilies to make lanterns from as many sources as I could find. However, when I started making them, I did a lot of experimenting to see what product would stiffen the best and hopefully allow the doilies to retain their shape from now until the end of June. I have some tips to share based on my experiments.

To make the round lantern shape, I decided to use balloons as my base. The benefit of using balloons is that they are extremely cheap and you can blow them up to any size you want. They can be big or small, depending on what size you want the lantern to be.

In my experimentation phase, I tried real crochet doilies. This was a total flop for me. In order to cover the balloon and have the size of the lantern I wanted, I had to use a relatively large doily. The problem I had was that I had trouble overlapping the parts of the doily that needed to come back together for the hole at the top of the lantern. When the doily dried, it looked pretty awful because it was all lumpy and not smooth. Either my doilies needed to be thinner material or I needed to use more than one that were smaller in size. So, what I finally ended up doing to get a decent doily lantern - and it really turned out to be a lace lantern - was to cut small circles out of lace. I'll talk more about my process a little later.

As far as stiffening the lace, I experimented with three different products. First of all, I tried wallpaper paste because several sites had recommended this as a stiffener. It was the worst of the three products I tried. I actually immersed my lace circles in the wallpaper paste - I wore disposable rubber gloves and worked at the sink. When the paste had dried and I removed the balloon, the lantern immediately sank in. It did not retain its shape at all.

The second product I tried was clear Elmer's glue. Again, I wore gloves and immersed the lace circles in the glue. When I removed the balloon, the lantern retained it's shape as long as it sat in one place and I didn't move it around or handle it. Excessive handling caused it to develop crevices in its surface.

The third and most successful product I tried - and the one which I will use for all my lanterns - is Plaid Stiffy Fabric Stiffener which I bought at Michael's. Using this, the lanterns have held up really well, at least in the short term.

I use the same technique with this product as I did the others. I pour the product in a bowl and then place my lace circles in it and make sure that they are covered with the product on both sides.

In fact, when I take them out to put them on the balloon, I squeeze all the extra product out. I then start putting the circles on the balloon, making sure to overlap the pieces. I have the balloon sitting on a disposable plastic cup as I'm working with it. I also leave it on the cup to dry. It makes a perfect surface for this. The excess product will actually drain down into the cup.

Just an FYI here about the size of the lace circles, you will need smaller circles for smaller lanterns but can use larger circles for larger lanterns. I found that I had some bulges in the surface of my lantern if the circles were too big for the size of the lantern.

Once I finish putting all my circles on the balloon - and I have the balloon upside down in my cup so that the top of the lantern is actually the top of the balloon - I go back with a paint brush and put extra product on all the seams and make the surface of the lantern as smooth as I can.

I found that the product takes awhile to dry. I always leave it overnight. In the morning, I turn the balloon upside down because the bottom is still wet since all the product ran that way. Then I leave it sit to dry that part.

I wanted to add some sparkle to my lantern. I first tried Mod Podge after I had removed the balloon and there was no support. This didn't work very well, because: 1) the Mod Podge didn't spread very well and 2) the lantern became wet again and wanted to collapse. So, I bought some spray on glitter and have been adding that before I remove the balloon and after the stiffener has dried. This has worked much better.

Once everything is dry, I take a pin and stick it into the balloon. Because the lace had product on both sides, sometimes the balloon sticks. I usually put my hand in the opening at the top of the lantern and help it along if it needs it. Fortunately, this hasn't caused my lanterns to collapse from the inside but I did have that problem with the glue and wallpaper paste.

Since the wedding isn't until June, I'm going to leave the balloons in until closer to that time. I don't want to have to worry about collapsing lanterns and there's no real reason to remove the balloons ahead of time. I just did it now because I wanted to know how they look and wanted to share that here.