Base it on ice

Ice bases enhance your luminaries, raise them to viewing level, and keep them above the new snow.  The extra thickness of a base can extend the life of an ice lantern with a thin floor.  If the candle does melt through the floor, lighting a candle in the base can keep the luminary going for additional days.  A broad base can support an ice lantern on a snowbank, providing a flat surface to which it can be firmly attached.

Without a leg to stand on, these
two ice globes are swallowed
up by 9 inches of new snow

Two Arctic Ice Lanterns are placed with their
open ends together just after unmolding.
They weld together solidly.

The base brings this ice globe to
a good viewing level and adds
thickness to its floor.

This display of ice lanterns for the Enchanted
Forest by Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis
uses a couple different types of base.

An Ikea Fniss wastebasket
was the mold for this base.

A ring of ice shot glasses raises
this ice globe above the base.

Smaller bases can be useful, too.

Plastic party bowls from Party City
make small, simple bases for ice lanterns.

Here, an ice flame that was frozen in
a fluted party bowl is joined to a
base made in the same kind of bowl.

This base holds a luminary firmly in place
and keeps it steady on a snowbank.  The
mold for the base was a lid for a plastic
party tray from Party City.

Here, a globe ice lantern (made in
a punch balloon) provides a base
for another globe.

The base, sitting atop an earlier ice
lantern tower, helps raise the
luminary for viewing.

As the luminary melts through its
floor, the candle moves into the base.

The base effectively provides
extra days of life for this ice lantern.

Here are three examples of a constrained-balloon ice lantern being placed on a base made in the same kind of mold, but without the balloon.  (For constrained-balloon ice lanterns click here.)

An Arctic Ice Lantern with its
angular sides as the base for
a constrained-balloon ice
lantern also made in an
Arctic Ice Lantern mold.

Base and constrained balloon luminary
made in a plastic container from the
AxMan surplus store.

This Ikea Fniss wastebasket
constrained-balloon ice
lantern was thin to begin with
and had melted through its
floor and the end of the base.
It could still be lit from the
lower level, though.

All your base are belong to us.

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Cold hands, cold hearts, and other ice decorations

You can make other fun stuff with ice besides ice lanterns.

Freeze a pair of hands in some gloves, and
you can have your ice lantern reaching
out of the "quicksand" for help.

Cheap vinyl or latex gloves will work for this, but heavy neoprene gloves can be used to make more natural-looking hands.

Stick icy hearts onto trees.  Why not?

Rough, thick bark holds the wet snow that I use to glue the hearts in place.  It helps to have cold weather when attaching them.

Erect ice castles

See the pages on funnels and ice castles for more detail.

Do you want to build a snowman?
Maybe not, if you can make
an ice maiden.

Stand some trees in the ice on a baking sheet
and put ducks in the foreground.  Add a little
chilled water to freeze them in place, and set
the finished diorama by a creek full of mallards.

This would look nice with blue LED lighting underneath.

Maybe an ice "gingerbread" house would be fun.  Let your imagination loose and see what happens!


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Single-bucket ice lanterns

Single-bucket ice lanterns

Two types of single-bucket ice lanterns are covered separately -- the Arctic Ice Lantern commercial mold and the Nonni's biscotti bulk package, which makes the easiest ice luminary.  

Many other containers can be used to make ice lanterns, as discussed in the introduction.  

The "bucket" is filled with water and left to freeze.  If the opening is to be in the side that is down during freezing, it should be set on the ground, preferably on snow.  If the opening into the luminary will be at the open end (the top during freezing), the bottom will freeze better if sitting on a cold surface like a tabletop.  

The uneven surface that tends to develop on the free side when water escapes from the core can be reduced by poking or drilling a hole in the thin ice during the freezing process.  This relieves the pressure inside.  Besides making the surface smoother, it reduces the chance that the mold will break.

Unmold single-bucket ice lanterns when the wall is around an inch thick.  Letting it freeze too long can result in a broken mold.  To remove the ice lantern from the mold, I like to set it upside-down in a bathtub or laundry tub with bubble wrap under it.  The lantern will drop down within 5 or 10 minutes and the mold can be lifted off.  The process can be speeded up by gently pouring hot water over the mold.  

The water inside the ice lantern can be poured out, but I like to pour it back into a mold and use it for another luminary, because it is already chilled.

Below are a couple specific examples that have worked well for us.

Ikea "Fniss" wastebasket.  

Fniss wastebasket from Ikea

This can be used to make an inverted truncated cone to use as a base for other ice lanterns or as a wind-resistant ice lantern on its own.  The inverted form is appealing because irregularities in the surface at the open end of the wastebasket don't matter much when that end is down -- and the small end tends not to freeze very solid when the mold sits on the ground, so it is easy to use that as the opening.

The Fniss wastebasket luminary
decorated and used on its own

A Fniss wastebasket as a base
for a globe ice lantern.

See the page for constrained balloon ice lanterns for the next example:

A constrained balloon luminary made
in an Ikea Fniss wastebasket and
decorated for Valentine's Day

We found a simple plastic storage bin at a surplus store.  (AxMan)  Its ridges make the ice lanterns look like Greek pillars, and since the molds were inexpensive, we could make many at once.  These containers have several important features that make them suitable for freezing ice lanterns.

All of the ridges on this container
are oriented so that they do not
interfere with unmolding.  At
each point, the container is
wider, rather than narrower,
toward the upper end.

The inside is smooth, without
anything that would interfere
with unmolding.

There is a slight indentation in the
bottom of the containers, so that
freezing is delayed there, making
it easy to pour out the water from
the core and producing a nice rim.

A simple column made in a
plastic storage container.

Thirty of these columns provided a "grand entry" to the Middlemoon Creekwalk

Ice lantern column lining the entry to
the 2016 Middlemoon Creekwalk

Day-after "ruins" of a row
of columns from the
Enchanted Forest at
the Luminary Loppet

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Punch balloon icemen

There's an inexpensive toy known as a punch balloon which can be used to make a very useful ice globe, especially for producing classical snowman balls that stack nicely, have consistent thickness, and develop the right shape.  We arrived at this method after trying some ordinary balloons supported in bowls of different sizes -- but that produced elongated shapes that had thin spots, didn't stack well, and didn't look like real snowmen.

A punch balloon (with a football design)
showing the loop through which the
elastic cord is attached opposite the knot.

On the end opposite the knot, the balloon has a loop through which an elastic cord is attached. Blow some air into the balloon (optional - - it can also be added later) and fill it with cold water from the tap. At this point, the elastic cord is down. When there is enough water in the balloon, add some air if you didn't do that at the beginning. This is to produce a flat end, so decide how much air to add depending on how large a flat area you want. Tie a knot to close the balloon and place the knotted side down. If it rests on snow, there will be a soft spot or an opening around where the knot is. Then stretch the elastic cord straight up and attach it to something.



Here, I used a picnic table with holes in the top and fastened the cords with clothespins. The air in the balloon keeps the loop away from the ice and also produces the surface on which the next globe sits. For the top globe, the air pocket can be small, but there should be at least some air to keep the loop free of ice.

For a snowman-shaped iceman, I make three (or 4 for "insurance") globes in different sizes.

An undecorated snow
person made from punch
balloons with only a small
amount of air added, so the
contact points are small.

The same ice "man" with
snowflake hair, heart nose
and mouth, disc eyes and
buttons, and upside-down
trees to suggest a skirt.

When the walls of the globes are thick enough, break the balloons open, pour out the water (or melt through the knot end if necessary and then empty out the water) and assemble the Iceman. Add facial features, clothing items such as buttons, and limbs.



I drilled holes to insert twigs for arms and a hot pepper for a nose, and added small ice discs for eyes and buttons on this iceman.  An ordinary power drill with a twist-drill bit can be used to make holes into ice globes.



The hat was made in two parts - - a shallow plastic lid for a party tray and a metal pet food bowl. The nose is a hot pepper, stuck into a small drilled hole.

This ice person is another for which
I used the upside-down trees to
represent a skirt or apron.  

The features on this ice snowman
are seed-heads from a beebalm
plant, with their stems stuck
into small drilled holes.

Lighting an ice snowman can be
challenging.  For this one, I made
a hole in the side of the lowest
ice globe by freezing it with
another balloon touching it.
The contact patch between
the two balloons freezes
last, but this sometimes
causes the balloon to
break prematurely.

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posted from Bloggeroid

Destruction. Delay? Delight?

The inevitable end -- delayed if possible

Ice lanterns don't last.  You can delay the inevitable, but at some point you might as well enjoy watching the destruction of your luminaries by sun, rain, wind, and heat.

Ice turns to water or even directly
to water vapor as the sun shines
on the ice lanterns.

Delaying ice lantern meltdown

* protect against sunlight by positioning ice lanterns in the shade
* use LED lights rather than candles
* move ice lanterns to a freezer when they aren't on display
* if using candles, isolate them from the luminary with an insulator
* limit burn time of candles
* make the ice lanterns as thick as possible
* place ice lanterns on top of thick bases of ice

Making the best of the meltdown

* if a candle melts through a lantern into the base below, reposition the candle

The candle sits inside the upper ice
lantern, which is on top of an
upside-down globe luminary,
itself on a column of
ice lanterns.

Several days of candles burning in
the upper lantern, along with warmer
weather, melt through the base of the
upper lantern and the solid upper end
of the base, creating a pool of water
in which a floating candle was lit.

This pair of ice lanterns shows one with
the base of the upper lantern melted
through and the one in the background
with the base still intact.  The column on
which the further lantern sits was made of
two Arctic Ice Lanterns with their open
ends joined, so that the large lantern on
top has a solid base under it.  The one in
the foreground is a large luminary placed
on the open end of another ice lantern.
Where there is more ice to melt through,
the candle is less likely to end up in the
supporting structure.

* Candles can be placed on something that at least spreads the heat over a large area, or on something that provides some insulation. Wintercraft recommends using a small upside-down plastic cup.  I usually put a lid from a can or a small ceramic plate under the candle.  Candles can create enough heat to melt through the ice below them.

With multiple freeze-thaw cycles, the metal
lids under the candles have melted through
layers of ice and have been frozen over.
Three lids are seen stacked within this
aging ice luminary.

A candle sinking into the ice.  The next time
 this lantern was lit, the hole was covered
with a ceramic dish to keep the candle
from sinking deeper in.

Enjoying the transformation

When there's no way to prevent the melting, enjoy the beauty of the transformation.

Cracks spread through the clear ice,
the upper edges melt, and the
walls grow thinner and thinner.

Even an amazingly thin remnant of ice can support a load -- until it suddenly collapses.

This increasingly lacy ice
lantern tower burned on
two levels for several nights
before it finally fell down.

More photos of melting ice lanterns, on Flickr.

Back to the introductory page.

Constrained balloon ice lanterns

A fairly easy way to add variety to your ice lanterns

Making an ice lantern in a balloon can yield more than just globe and teardrop shapes.  A balloon that is constrained within a container can take on a totally different form.  Oddly, I made ice lanterns in bucket-type molds and separately in balloons for a couple of years without thinking of putting the balloons inside the molds.

This large luminary was made in a
36" party balloon inside an IKEA
"Fniss" wastebasket, producing
a softer form that is taller than
the wastebasket mold.

We had actually been constraining balloons all along -- just not thinking of it that way.  Wintercraft's sturdy balloons require only a minimal support, but ordinary thin latex balloons flatten into a blob if they aren't placed in bowl to maintain their rounded shape.  The instructions for making a globe ice lantern from an ordinary balloon simply assume that some kind of support is needed -- and we went beyond that by using bowls with fluting to make the globes more interesting.

An ice globe luminary made by
constraining an ordinary latex
balloon in a fluted bowl.

A blob.  This balloon does sit on a
plate with a slight rim, but the large
balloon would need more support.

Ordinary balloons' weakness becomes an advantage when you want to create varied forms, and especially if you enjoy more rounded edges to your designs.  This Norwegian website opened my eyes to the exciting options that this method offers.

You can curve a shape above the rim of a container, and you can make oval and other forms.

An oval bucket used to make a
luminary with both a curved top
and an oval shape

You can soften the lines of the Arctic Ice Lantern without losing the six flat faces that provide surfaces for decoration.

The Arctic Ice Lantern mold being
lifted off a balloon with a frozen
ice lantern in a rounded shape

Removing the balloon, with the
Arctic Ice Lantern hexagonal
mold in the background.

Note the bubble wrap under the ice lantern.  Although the luminaries are usually resistant to cracking, setting them on a layer of bubble wrap provides extra protection, and it also insulates them from warm surfaces.

Smoothing the contours of the
central hole (which had remained
open as the rest of the walls froze),
using a flat-bottomed metal pet
food bowl full of hot water.

If the ice lantern is removed when the walls are at the right thickness (about an inch), there will be a hole in the ice where the mold was sitting on the ground.  Sometimes, a thin layer of ice or slush covers that area and can be easily broken through.  If the luminary has frozen further, or if the surface that it sat on was particularly cold, the ice could be thick there, and it might need to be melted using the metal bowl with hot water, in order to reach the core of liquid water.  The arched surface of the balloon seems to direct the ice crystals to form straight lines, so if you want a nice round hole, you need to smooth the edges.

The finished lantern as made in a
balloon inside an Arctic Ice Lantern
sits on top of one made in the same
kind of mold (upside down as a base).
You can see the contrast between the
sharp edges on the lower one and the
rounded contours of the upper one.
The faces of both are flat enough
to add ice appliques.

Without repeating the details of production, this is another example of a base made without a liner and an ice lantern on top that was frozen in a balloon inside the same type of mold:

This ice lantern and base
were frozen inside a
small plastic bucket.

Here is a step-by-step description of freezing the large luminary at the top of this blog post:  

A 36" latex party balloon is filled with
cold water while inside an IKEA "Fniss"
wastebasket.  To ensure that a hole remains
at the upper end of the finished luminary, the
bottom of the wastebasket at this stage, I put
a raised disc in the center.  The disc could be
any of several options, such as a yogurt cup,
a rubber stopper, etc., but I had found a
container lid that worked very well.
Usually, the end remains open
even without using a disc.

Blowing some air into the balloon makes
a flat base for the finished ice lantern.
This one is sitting on a cold porch,
where it took more than 24 hours
to freeze.  I often freeze some
smaller balloons so that I
can check their thickness
before deciding when to
unmold a large one like this.

Sealing the balloon with a removable clip makes the job easier.  I use clips that Wintercraft sells to seal their extra-strong balloons, but Ikea's clips for small bags would probably also work well.  Tying the end of the balloon works, too, but it can be difficult if the balloon is under much pressure.

I brought the ice lantern indoors
when it felt solid and other balloons
that I froze around the same time had
proven to be thick enough.  

Removing the wastebasket from the balloon,
which is sitting on bubble wrap after having
its clip removed so that the balloon flattened
over the base.  It sometimes requires
pouring hot water over the mold
to loosen it enough to remove.

The blue disc with the raised center
was a lucky find.  It happens to fit
perfectly in the wastebasket and
guarantees that the center of the
ice lantern's top (the base during
the freezing process) will be the
last area to solidify.  This is a
nice touch, but usually not
absolutely necessary.

This large ice lantern is hard to handle
because of its weight.  I cut a hole in the
balloon and used a hand-operated pump
to remove the water from the core before
moving the slippery lantern around much.

The balloon peels off easily.  Along the stress
lines, the ice crystals tended to form in straight
lines, making a rectangular hole at the top.

Because I would rather have a round hole at the top,
I smooth the opening using a metal bowl filled with
hot water, refilling it as it cools.  Spinning the bowl
quickly melts a shallow area that keeps it centered.

I decorated the luminary with ice
snowflakes.  The large size makes
the curvature gentle enough that
they will stick in place as well as
they would on a flat surface.

When finished, this ice lantern provided
good protection against a strong breeze
that extinguished other luminaries.

One of my favorite constrained balloon shapes resembles the glass chimney of an old-fashioned kerosene lamp.

A constrained balloon ice lantern
sitting on a base made in a plastic
party tray lid.

It is made by filling a balloon with water while it is held inside a vase with a flared top, then adding some air to make the flat bottom, and freezing it -- being careful not to let the walls get too thick.

This flared plastic vase is filled
over the top with water in a sturdy
balloon.  Air is added to make the
flat bottom of the ice lantern.

The chimney is narrow enough that it can end up with too tight an opening to allow placing a candle in it or getting adequate ventilation.  I have had to pare down a candle to fit down the hole and drill air holes in from the lower end when one of these ice lanterns froze a bit too long before being unmolded.  On the other hand, if they aren't frozen long enough, the chimney can be too thin and delicate.

This plastic vase came from Party City.
It has small struts at the bottom;  I put
a lid of that size over them to make an
air pocket to delay freezing there and
to help flatten the upper end of the
chimney.  Even so, it is often
necessary to melt open the
end of the chimney to
release the water
from the core.

Another very lovely constrained-balloon ice lantern is made using a plastic container with squared, outsloping sides.  This yields an ice lantern with sides that face upward, making its decorations easy to see when it is placed on the ground and protecting the flame from wind.

The plastic tub from Party City shapes
the ice lantern to produce flattened
sides that face upward and can be
decorated with ice appliques.

Unmolding the constrained
balloon luminary.

The slight inward slope of the sides
and the flattening that the mold
produces enable this ice lantern
to display the owl appliques
where they can easily be seen.

Constraining a balloon inside another object expands the options for creating different shapes.  It allows you to make ice lanterns that are larger than the molds you are using (but watch out for a flood if your balloon breaks!) and it produces a flatter base than you will usually get from simply freezing your luminary in a mold.

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