by Crystal Sands
One of the best presents I ever received was an ice lantern made by my lovely neighbor. It was in the cold, dark of winter, and that beautiful light warmed my soul. My neighbor told me they were easy to make, so I became determined that, this year, I would make enough ice lanterns to line our long driveway.
It has to be really cold to make these, but lucky for me and unlucky for our poor farm animals, we hit a really deep cold early here in Maine this year. I was able to make a couple, so I could share my process with you.
Here are the steps:
- First, you just need a bucket with no cracks or holes. I used both a five gallon bucket and a two gallon bucket. I like the robust size of the five gallon bucket, but the smaller bucket was also little easier to freeze.
- Fill your bucket with water.
- On a cold night when it’s well below freezing outside, just sit your bucket outside.
- The next day, bring the bucket inside for a few minutes, just so the ice kind of melts around the edges and will slide out of the bucket.
- Head back outside, dump out the ice lantern. Flip over the ice and then the bottom of the bucket will be the top of your lantern.
- Using a tool of some kind (I used a screw driver, but I wished for a little saw), bust out the ice at the top of your lantern. Once you get through the ice, you now have an ice lantern.
- You can add greenery and something for color (cranberries or dried oranges) or just keep it simple and have just the ice.
- Add your candle, and enjoy the beauty!
PS If you live where it just won’t quite get cold enough, if you use the smaller bucket, you can make an ice lantern in a chest freezer. Even at a little above freezing outside, the ice lantern will last for a few days.
