How to Make an Autumn Leaf Lantern

You need an empty glass jar, a handful of leaves, Mod Podge, ordinary white craft glue, some packaging string and a candle for the inside.

A jar with straighter sides is easier to work on than a round one, though a round jar does work - it just fights you a bit more on the curve. A mason jar is fine. So is whatever the marmalade came in.

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Hold each leaf against the jar and fix it with a small piece of tape. Do the whole arrangement this way before any glue comes out.

It lets you shuffle things around while nothing is committed, and it means you will not forget which leaf was supposed to go where once your hands are covered in Mod Podge.

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Load a soft, fluffy brush and paint a thick layer of Mod Podge onto the glass where the first leaf is going to sit.

Thick is deliberate here. A thin coat will not hold a dry leaf down against a curved surface, and you will spend the next ten minutes pressing the same edge back down.

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Lay the leaf onto the wet Mod Podge, then paint straight over the top of it with another thick layer.

Cover every part of the leaf - right out to the edges and into the points. Any spot you leave uncoated is precisely the spot that lifts away once it dries.

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Carry on leaf by leaf around the jar.

The curve is the difficult part, especially low down near the base, and leaves will keep springing back off. Keep brushing more Mod Podge over the top and they settle eventually. Smaller leaves are far easier to manage on a round jar than big ones.

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Dab white craft glue over the remaining bare glass in irregular dots and streaks.

Being messy is the entire point of this step. The uneven, slightly lumpy surface is what catches the candlelight, and lit from inside it looks like rain running down the outside of the jar.

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Let the whole thing dry completely. The glue is slow, so give it overnight rather than an hour.

Then run a line of glue around the neck of the jar and wind the packaging string around it a few times. Drop a candle inside and it is done.

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