Colorful DIY Origami String Lights

A classic paper water bomb pulls double duty as Chinese paper lanterns for these DIY origami paper lantern string lights. These colorful paper lanterns with lights are perfect for Chinese New Year festivities — along with indoor and outdoor parties year round!

Jump to:

• Origami String Lights
• Paper Lanterns DIY Supplies
• How To Make Paper Lanterns
• Attaching The DIY String Lights Covers
• Uses For Paper Lantern String Lights
• More Fun DIY Projects

Origami String Lights

While scrolling Pinterest for a Chinese New Year craft for my girls, I came across an image featuring an evening party scene with some gorgeous paper origami string lights hung in the trees.

I immediately fell madly in love with the glowy hanging paper lanterns, but there was no linked URL. After searching high and low for them, I finally tracked a set down on Etsy — and nearly fell over when I saw they were priced at $55 for!!!

WHOA, that's just a little too pricey for my tap water budget! So I decided we'd attempt to make some similar DIY backyard string lights...

Paper Lanterns DIY Supplies

All told, my DIY version of these Chinese paper lantern lights only set me back about $5 in scrapbook paper! Of course, I did repurpose a strand of white Christmas lights, which helped to keep my costs down. If you don't have any on hand, thrift stores are a great resource for them this time of year.

Supplies you'll need:

• 12"x12" scrapbook paper pad
• bone folder creasing tool (optional)
• 100-ct. strand of mini white lights
• transparent Scotch tape

The colorful scrapbook paper I used is made by Colobok in the pattern Fruit Punch, but it seems that it may have been discontinued. No worries though — just choose a scrapbook paper that features bright colors and whimsical prints to make the most beautiful origami light covers!

How To Make Paper Lanterns

The paper lanterns DIY inspiration for my string lights covers is a total grade school throwback... It's an origami water bomb! These were popular at my elementary school, along with folded paper footballs and origami fortune tellers. Did you make any of these when you were younger?

Paper water bombs are really quite easy to make, and they're perfectly sized for an origami lantern. Once you've folded a few, you'll be able to whip through them very rapidly. Seriously, if my 8-year-old can make them, so can you!

Originally I was going to do a step-by-step tutorial, but this How To Make An Origami Water Bomb tutorial on wikiHow is super simple to follow. So I figured why reinvent the wheel? Since the scrapbook paper is already square, you can skip the trimming step and start with folding the scrapbook paper on each diagonal.

BONUS: Earn major cool mom points with your kids!! Mine were amazed when I showed them how to blow into the opening of a folded Chinese water bomb to transform it into a cube.

Attaching The DIY String Lights Covers

I attached the origami string lights covers to my light strand by inserting the bulb into the open end of the water bomb. The paper lantern/light cover is then secured to the string light strand with a small piece of transparent Scotch tape, as shown in the image above.

One thing we quickly realized is that the bulbs on our light strand were much closer together than the original photo. Which means the 12"x12" paper makes string lights covers that are a bit too large to place over each bulb. To solve the problem, we simply opted to put a paper lantern cover on every fifth bulb.

We actually love the combination of the covered origami lights and the bright white exposed lights! It provides the same overall effect with more light output than you'd get with them all covered.

However, if you want to cover each individual bulb, scrapbook paper does come in smaller squares, or you can also try using origami paper. Just keep in mind that it doesn't come in as many beautiful prints and is quite a bit more delicate to work with.

Uses For Paper Lantern String Lights

I can think of SO many uses for these beautiful origami lights well beyond Chinese New Year — indoor or outdoor parties, weddings, baby showers, Christmas, you name it! With the wide variety of scrapbook paper patterns and colors available, you can easily customize them for any theme.

My girls are already begging me to hang this strand up in their bedroom, so it appears that I'm going to have to replace a strand of our outdoor Christmas lights next November. BTW, these removable wire toggle hooks are ideal for damage-free hanging!

I was also thinking that lots of smaller origami light covers on icicle lights would be stunning... But my patience is wearing a bit thin at this point, so I'll save that crafty fun for another day. :)