So I was recently asked how I made my dark lantern for my Beast costume. I am very silly and often don’t take progress pictures, and that was definitely the case here, so I’m going to do the best I can. You can find the lantern I used on Amazon, right [here].
I started by disassembling the whole lantern. The tubes on the sides were the first to go, along with the wires holding the glass. All I needed to do was wiggle them back and forth and the tubes popped right out. Those pieces basically held the whole thing together, so after that it came apart into separate pieces easily.
I also took the handle for carrying it by hand off, along with the little ring on the top. I did need a pair of needle-nose pliers for that part. Make sure you don’t damage the handle piece though, since we’ll be putting it back on. You also can take the little black knob off of the lantern, leaving just a smaller knob inset in the base. That’s the part that turns the light on, but we have to make it stick out a bit if we want to be true to the OtGW design.
After that I started constructing the basic shape. Believe it or not, the main form of the lantern is made out of – wait for it – a soda bottle. You can see in the pictures that near the bottom the form is rounded because of the shape of the bottle, but has darts on top where I needed to make it curve in. Pretty sure I just used super glue for that part, and it worked like a charm. The ridges on the sides are just strips of craft foam (sealed with modge podge before paint.) The circle where the light shines out is made out of frosted white plastic folder with a rim of craft foam.
You’ll also notice that on my lantern there are 4 little raised circles. Those are just pieces of styrene that I cut and sanded to cover the holes that were left when I removed the 2 side tubes. The rim-thing around the top was obviously not big enough for the OtGW design, so I made a new one (also with styrene,) and heat formed it so it tilted downwards. I’ve found that the best way to do that is to get 2 metal or glass bowls of appropriate sizes and press the heated styrene in between them. I had to make 2 hooks for the handle at this time too, so I grabbed some 14 g wire and whipped them up. The edge around the rim was finished with some clear plastic tubing that I slit lengthwise with an exacto and glued on.
Before I could start putting this thing back together I had to figure out the knob for the light. I ended up grabbing a piece of aluminum rod and epoxying it to the knob in the base. I then epoxied the black knob to the top of the rod to top it off. I had to cut into my soda bottle form to make it fit, which you can see if you look closely.
After that, all that was left was to glue it together. You absolutely need epoxy for this part. The lantern is really heavy with the D batteries in it, and without the tubes on the sides the whole lantern is held together with the bond you’re going to make. It’s tough to explain the gluing process without pictures, but I’m sure you guys can figure it out. I suggest letting each bond cure before moving to the next one so you don’t knock anything out of place while it’s setting. Finally, I hid my sloppy bond between the base of the lantern and the soda bottle piece with another piece of plastic tubing, primed, painted, and weathered.
I’d love to make another one, since I made this in about 2 days with not much sleep. I know if i worked more from scratch, with better materials, I could create a much better final product (I hate making sloppy work, and this is pretty sloppy for me.)
1) Take the thing apart. All of it.
2) Make the big shape out of a soda bottle. Accents with craft foam, styrene, clear plastic tubing, 14g wire, and frosted white plastic folder.
3) Put the thing back together with super glue and epoxy.
4) Seal the craft foam, prime, and paint. Go you!
areudirty
vaporwave
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
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