Introduction: Sea of Thieves Inspired Lantern

By Natasha Matthews
About: I am a maker from the St. Louis area. I have spent a lot of time playing video games and watching anime. I am finally jumping into the world of making things I like from these places.

I recently attend a pirate themed party over Memorial Day weekend and I wanted to make a couple props for the event. One prop was a hat and the other was a working lantern. Here is how I made my Sea of Thieves inspired lantern.

Attachments

Supplies

Materials

  • 10, 6,2, mm Foam
  • Neopixels
  • petg Plastic https://tntcosplaysupply.com/product/petg/
  • Parchment paper
  • 220 grit sand paper
  • sea foam glass spray
  • silver, black, brown, gunmetal, paint
  • Painters tape
  • wood glue and plasti dip
  • armature wire
  • utility knife
  • neodymium magnets

Tools

  • Hot glue gun
  • 3AA batter holder
  • Soldering gun and solder,
  • hook up wire wire cutter and wire stripper
  • Dev board
  • alligator clips

Software

  • Arduino Create

Step 1: Making the Handle

Take 2 10mm foam cut out a bevel super glued my wire into the trench. When the glue was dried I put 2 coats of contact cement on each side beveled side. Wait 5 minutes for the cement to dry before sandwiching them together. Cut down the corners so you have a cylinder. Take a strip of 2mm foam and wrap it around the cylinder. You can use contact cement or superglue as you wrap. I applied contact cement in a few spots as I went and secured down each end. Once I had my cylinder wrapped I cut out 2 handle pieces out of 10mm foam and attached it to the cylinder.

Step 2: Making the Top

Cut out one of the large base rectangles out of 10mm foam to form the top of the lantern. cut out the Top 2 and Top 3 out of 6mm foam. Glue these into the center of each rectangle . Stack the smaller on top as you build up. The chain and the base of the chain was make from 2,10mm foam stuck together. Once the top was done I rounded some of the edges with my utility knife. Once I got the look I wanted I attached the bottom of the handle to the outside of the chain.

Step 3: Making the Sides

The sides of lantern consist of the foam frame from 6mm foam, PETG plastic, and 2mm foam decoration. I wanted to lantern to have 2 sides that were smaller than the others. Cut out 2 of each side. When cutting out the foam try to cut a bevel on the sides. It will give the edges a cleaner connection what we glue them together.

Take the film off one side of the plastic and ruff up the area where you want to place the foam with 220 grit sand paper. This will make it easier for the foam to stick to the plastic when we apply superglue. When you have the foam frames and decorations attached remove the film form the other side of the plastic. I wanted the plastic to have a frosted look. I have some Sea Foam glass spray and applied 3 coats.

When the frost is dried glue together each side together so it makes a rectangle.

Step 4: Program the Lights

Make a cylinder out of 6mm foam. Make it long enough that it will stick to the bottom and the top of the lantern. Take you Neopixels and tin your wires and the pads on the neopixels strip solder you hook up wires to Ground, Power, and Data In. When working with Neopixles make sure the Arrow is pointing to the right. When that is done we will upload the code to our dev board.

I watch the Punished Porps video on their build of the lantern. They linked to Schnoggo’s Github. https://github.com/schnoggo/jack-o-candle. It works great for this project. I had a Lilypad Arduino that work great for mobile or wearable projects. I coped the code form Schnoggo’s github and pasted it in Arduino Create. This is a browser based version of the Arduino IDE. Upload the code to you board and test to make sure the lights work on the board by connecting them with alligator clips. Once you have the lights working the way want detached the lights from the board and attach them to the cylinder. I used hot glue for this step.

Step 5: Making the Base

Take one of the bases and in each corner cut out holes that will fit a magnet. Glue together the last 2 bases together to form a 20mm thick base. Cut holes on top of the base to line up the magnets with the other base. Map out and cut out the ares where you want to place your dev board, battery holder, and your wires and cut these ares out. When that is done attach the lights to the top base and poke a hole to feed the wires through and solder the lights and the batteries to the dev board and them hot glue the dev board and the batteries into place.

I did not add any type of switch at this point. I have to take out the batteries to get the lights to stop.

If you happen to have a gap between the bases you can add a strip of foam to cover each the gap.

Step 6: Sandwich, Seal, and Paint

When you have the base together and the lights working glue the sides down to the base. Add in some parchment paper if you want you lights to be more defused. Once that is done glue on the top.

I covered the plastic with blue painters tape and heat sealed my foam and them apples 3 layers of wood glue. I let it dry overnight and applied 2 coats of Plasti dip and then 2 layers of silver spray paint.

I then went in with my acrylic paints. Black, silvers, burnt under, gunmetal.