Easy to make and beautiful ice lanterns

When I popped over to the Woodland Trust Nature Detectives website over half- term these ice lanterns caught my eye.
I quite often find different pots of things in my freezer and not food that has been in there to long!!!  Oscar rather like’s giving things the freezer test so when I saw these I thought they would be perfect to make.

Even more perfect is was Valentines day and with a romantic meal for four planned (!) yes Bex and Oz gate crashed the ‘tete a tete’, we decided to get stuck in.

Oscar fancied adding a bit of colour so we gathered up a few food colouring’s and got started.
It is nice and easy so as you can see we gather 4 containers 2 of which had to be smaller to create the lantern. We used some stones to weigh the smaller cup down as when we added the water obviously the smaller one floated. Oscar added a few drops of colouring, he chose green and then we create an orange using pink and yellow colouring. Then I popped them on a tray and put them in the freezer. These were completely frozen within 6-7 hours.

You can use also sorts of shaped containers as long as they are freezer proof. Though do make sure they fit in the freezer before starting. If the temperature drops below freezing again this year and as I type this it is quite warm out so I am hoping that might not happen but the Woodland Trust suggest you can do it outside with buckets. Which would create rather magnificent lanterns and one I must remember.

As you can see they are super effective. I can’t explain how beautiful they actually looked on the table but the were so gorgeous I didn’t want to leave the table. They also had a fascination factor as they gradually melted but these one’s could have gone on for hours!!!
I love the fact the two different types of plastic gave completely different texture ice too. Next time I am going to get the Pyrex bowl out and maybe add some bit’s to it. For spring you could add flowers from the garden though I think you need to freeze it for a while then add them.

Anyway it was a great and simple little project with totally fantastic results. The ice lanterns will be made again and again.

The Woodland trust put Oscar’s lanterns on their site which he is very proud of. I highly recommend you pop over there for idea’s lots of things to do and make. You can also find woods near you that you may not of known were there.

As with all candles do follow usual candle safety with these