Wednesday, July 24, 2013

DIY Medieval Torches, Chandeliers, and Banners

Our church hosted a "Kingdom Chronicles" VBS this year so I needed to come up with some simple and inexpensive medieval decorations. Here's what I made...


Poster board torches (Yield 10)
  • 3 sheets of each red, orange, and yellow tissue paper
  • 2 sheets of black poster board (you can get 5 cones from each sheet)
  • staples
  • hot glue gun
  • 11" quarter circle made using a measuring tape and pencil like a compass
  • sticky tack or pushpins to hand the torches with

Roll your quarter circle into a cone
Add one staple at the outside upper corner
  1. Take one sheet of each color tissue paper (red, orange, and yellow)
  2. Lay them on top of each other and cut into quarters
  3. Bunch the centers together and staple
Hot glue the stapled tip of the tissue paper to the inside of the poster board cone

Toilet paper roll chandelier (Yields 2)
  • 1 sheet of each red, orange, and yellow tissue paper, each cut into 16 rectangles
  • 1 sheet of black poster board
  • 12 toilet paper tubes
  • 4 large cardboard circles (14"-16" diameter) like the ones pictured below
  • staples
  • hot glue gun
1.  Glue 2 circles together (for strength)
2.  Makes 1/2" cuts around the bottom of every toilet paper tube
3.  Open up the slits and hot glue the tubes evenly around the outer edge of your circles
4.  Spray paint your chandeliers from top to bottom with black spray paint
5.  Make "flame" tufts out of your tissue paper and staple them at the bottom (like the torches above)
6.  Stuff tissue paper "flames" into each toilet paper tube
7.  Cut poster board into 1" x 6 1/4" strips (you should be able to get at least 90 strips of paper)
8.  Make 6 separate paper chains of 13-15 links each (depending on how long you want them)
9.  Glue 3 paper chains to each chandelier
10. Connect your three chains together with one final link.
11. Hang your chandeliers using fishing line and ceiling hooks. 

Dollar store tablecloth banners
  • 2 different color dollar store tablecloths for each banner
  • 16"-20" piece of ribbon to tie each banner
  • fishing line or yarn to tie the two tablecloths together at the top corners
  • duct tape or ceiling hooks to hang the banners from the ceiling
The finished product - teaching section up front, craft and coloring station at the back.
Display area for our week's verses



5 comments:

  1. This is great! Thank you for posting your ideas and pictures. I am planning on having a Medieval Feast for my history class and these are ideas I can use.

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  2. thanks this is a great idea to do for a school project!!!

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  3. Thank you so much. This has given me many ideas I can do turning our library into a mid evil castle!

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  4. I'm the Editor of Fun Family Crafts and wanted to let you know that we have featured your fabulous medieval chandelier! You can see it here:

    https://funfamilycrafts.com/medieval-chandelier/

    If you have other kid-friendly craft tutorials, we'd love for you to submit them. Thanks for an awesome project idea!

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  5. I've been looking all over for Camelot ideas for a baby shower this is perfect. All the castle ideas seem to be for princess parties but when my niece welcomes little Arthur Dec I want them to remember a baby shower in his honor.

    ReplyDelete