Introduction: Can-o-lanterns
This isn't really supposed to be an instructable, just wanted to show what I did during Halloween instead of carving pumpkins. It's something I did in memoriam of my grandpa who taught me a lot about using my hands for making stuff.
He died on Halloween so this was my way of thinking about him, and saying thanks for everything.
Love you grandpa and I'll miss our evenings drinking dry martinis and talking!
So what I did was using old beer cans in aluminium for the material, my dremel for cutting, carving and polishing the design and paper and pen for coming up with the designs. For flattening out the bottom I used a flat-bottomed wooden mojito-stamp (can't recall the real word for it at the moment) and flattened the middle to fit a tea-light, leaving the rest as is to keep the aluminium from heating up the area under the bottom. When I lit up the can the first time I realised I needed more weight so I heated up all of the tea light and poured out the wax in the bottom to get some extra weight. Works perfectly and I even get a permanent groove for keeping the light in place.
The wax have started to melt unevenly so the tea candles don't burn entirely empty any more. Still using the wax as bottom weight but added a circle of another discraded can on top of it that I fitted in. I stamped out a candle sized grove in it so the candle will keep in place easier.
I'm going to add new designs every now and then to this small show-off, 'cause the inspiration from all the REAL jack-o-lanterns and the effect it gives onto the wall is a big inspiration and because grandpa always motivated me to try new things and designs even though they actually rarely worked :P
He died on Halloween so this was my way of thinking about him, and saying thanks for everything.
Love you grandpa and I'll miss our evenings drinking dry martinis and talking!
So what I did was using old beer cans in aluminium for the material, my dremel for cutting, carving and polishing the design and paper and pen for coming up with the designs. For flattening out the bottom I used a flat-bottomed wooden mojito-stamp (can't recall the real word for it at the moment) and flattened the middle to fit a tea-light, leaving the rest as is to keep the aluminium from heating up the area under the bottom. When I lit up the can the first time I realised I needed more weight so I heated up all of the tea light and poured out the wax in the bottom to get some extra weight. Works perfectly and I even get a permanent groove for keeping the light in place.
The wax have started to melt unevenly so the tea candles don't burn entirely empty any more. Still using the wax as bottom weight but added a circle of another discraded can on top of it that I fitted in. I stamped out a candle sized grove in it so the candle will keep in place easier.
I'm going to add new designs every now and then to this small show-off, 'cause the inspiration from all the REAL jack-o-lanterns and the effect it gives onto the wall is a big inspiration and because grandpa always motivated me to try new things and designs even though they actually rarely worked :P