Happy Chinese New Year!

It's the year of the Dog! What better way to celebrate than with a few paper crafts? (China, after all, was where paper was first created.) 

These pictures are from a few years back when I visited Hong Kong, but I never ended up posting them. This very simple red envelope lantern was quick to make and looked very festive when strung up next to the window. 

One of my aunts works for a bank and each year, they give out packets of red envelopes for free. She gave me stacks of the extras for my crafting.

I kept things basic. I folded in the four corners of each envelope and then I stapled five envelopes together at their corners. 

You end up with a flower module. I made two of these to form the ends. 

Connecting the two ends was a bit tricky. Some of the vertices ended up have only 3 envelopes meeting. 

Here's half of the lantern. 

When completely assembled, it looks like this. A bit more tubular than I had envisioned but the gold and red are very eye catching. 

Happy Chinese New Year!