Toilet Roll Chinese Paper Lantern Craft

This is a really simple paper craft making a Chinese paper lantern using a toilet roll and some card stock. Suitable for children for all ages. Little ones will need some help with the cutting and measuring, but older children should be able to do it completely independently.

I enjoy looking at festivities that take place in other countries and cultures for inspiration for our craft projects, and it also gives the children (and often myself) the opportunity to learn about them.

This week we have been talking a lot about Chinese New Year. We have been looking at what animals represent the years we were born in, what each one means, and how Chinese New Year is celebrated.

Previously we have made some jam jar Chinese Paper Lanterns, but I wanted to come up with a simple craft that required very little in the way of materials that the kids could do with their friends over a Zoom chat. So we came up with these simple toilet roll Chinese paper lanterns.

So if you’d like to see how we made them keep reading, or pin for later!

Pin ‘Toilet Roll Chinese Paper Lantern Craft’ for later!

What You Will Need

• Toilet roll
• Yellow or orange paint
• Paintbrush
• Red paper or lightweight card
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Glue
• Optional- sequins, washi tape, glitter pens to decorate

How You Make Your Toilet Roll Chinese Paper Lantern

1.First paint your toilet roll. This will be the centre of the lantern so good colour choices are yellow or orange. We used acrylic paint as it’s what we had available, but poster paint works equally as well, you may just need to give it a few coats.

2. Cut a rectangle from your paper or card 16 cm by 14cm, and a small strip 12cm by 1.5cm.

3. Fold in half along the longer axis, and draw a line 1.5cm up from the free edge. Then mark every 1cm along the folded edge.

4. Using scissors cut from the marks on the folded edge down to the line that you have made. Once you have made all the cuts, unfold the card and fold the other way. This means all your pencil markings will be on the inside so you wont see them.

6. This bit can be a bit tricky. Apply glue to the top and bottom of your piece of card about and below your slits which should be vertical. Then stick the card to the toilet roll, lining up the top and bottom edges of your card with the top and bottom edges of your toilet roll. Depending on what glue you are using you may need to use paper clips to help keep the card in place whilst it’s drying.

7. Then glue your small strip of card to the inside of the toilet roll to make a handle for your lantern.

8. Finally you can decorate your toilet roll Chinese paper lantern as you wish, or leave it plain. We used some gold sequins on one of ours and some gold sparkle washi tape on another.

That’s it, our finished Toilet Roll Chinese Paper Lanterns ready to celebrate Chinese New Year.

If you need more inspiration for Chinese New Year’s crafts then don’t forget to check out and follow our Pinterest board.

So what do you think of our Chinese paper lantern craft? Have you anything similar before? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Kerry x