Ice Lanterns

In this instructable, you will learn how to make an ice lantern. You can put your ice lanterns outside or lining a walkway. Wherever you put them, they will look nice and light up the night. This project is very easy and simple, and you will not need to buy items for this.

-Recycled plastic container (small bottle, yogurt cups, etc.)

-food dye (optional)

-X-ACTO knife, or scissors

-small electric light (battery operated tea light would work)

Take a yogurt cup, and fill it 3/4's of the way full with water.

If you wanted to have a colored light, you could take food dye and stir it into the water.

Let the yogurt cup filled with water freeze. However, do not let it freeze all the way. Let the water sit outside until the water on the sides and bottom of the yogurt cup freezes. The water on the outside of the yogurt cup freezes first because that is what is closest to the cold temperatures. When you pull the ice out, it should look like the pictures.

After you pull the ice out of the yogurt container, place another tea light on the ground, and place the "ice bowl" over the light. Then you have a ice lantern.

If you want to make your ice lantern more decorative, you can put a block of colored ice on it, or around it. You can simply do this by taking a yogurt cup filled with water, stir in some dye, and letting it freeze fully.

I did not do this, but if you wanted to make a big ice lantern, you could fill a 5-gallon bucket with water and put a milk jug filled with water inside of it, let it freeze for at least 24 hours, then take the milk jug out and put a bigger tea light where the milk jug was.

Get an empty milk container. Take your X-ACTO knife or scissors and cut the part of the container that has the handle and the top. Get a smaller bottle that would fit in the milk container. I used a small coke bottle. Now, cut off the top. Next, fill the milk container halfway with water, and do the same with the smaller bottle. Place the coke bottle filled with water in the middle of the milk container filled with water. Then, put the ice mold outside for a few hours, depending on the temperature. Before you take the ice out, make sure that it all has frozen. Then, pull the smaller bottle filled with ice out of the bigger milk container also filled with ice. You might need to slice the smaller plastic bottle open to be able to take it, and the ice inside it, out of the ice in the milk container. Once you have taken the smaller bottle and its ice out, there will be an indent in the ice when you pull the ice out of the milk container. After you have checked the ice from the milk container over to make sure all of the ice is frozen, take one of the tea lights and place it outside where you want your ice lantern to go. Next, take the ice with the indent on it and place it over the tea light. The indent is the space in the ice lantern where you want your tea light to go. When the tea light is in the ice lantern and turned on, the ice lantern should glow brightly.

After you have a yogurt cup filled with water, freeze it fully. Next, drill a hole in the ice big enough for the tea light to fit. Then put that over a tea light.

The ice lantern made out of a yogurt cup is made simply by filling a yogurt cup with water and letting it freeze, then taking it out when only ice has formed around the edges.

Thank you for looking at this instructable, and I hope you will have fun if you make it.