The ancient English town Ross-on-Wye lies at the northern end of the Forest of Dean near the spectacular landscape of Symonds Yat and close to the border with Wales, and boasts the charming independent organic food store Field Fayre, which can also be found on-line at Facebook.
The Ross-on-Wye mascot is the hedgehog and various manifestations of this threatened animal can be seen around the town. I thought it might be interesting to make a paper lantern hedgehog which could perhaps be used in the store window during this dark part of the year.
My first attempts were around the form of the Chinese paper lantern but that proved to be something of a dead end, either too complex or just not hedgehog alike.
The second try was using the equally revered Chinese fan as a starting point, and as most of us have made the things as children they are familiar and easy.
These are all trials, a child could do a better job with the folding, cutting and glue! The body is fan-folded using one sheet of A4 then opened out and the edges snipped to make the hedgehog spines, some oval shapes cut out on the folds to allow light from a led fairy light or led candle. The head is a slightly flattened cone from a second sheet of paper – I managed to get four from one A4 sheet – with tabs left to enable it to be glued to the fan-body end.
Just to see if I could get an even simpler construction I used the cone form and this was the result.
Using a translucent paper such as velum would work for these lanterns I think.
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