Adding Color to Ice Lanterns

Adding color to ice lanterns

It's not easy to incorporate color into ice.

Water pushes impurities out of the way as it freezes, so coloring agents end up concentrated in the not-yet-frozen water rather than in the ice.

Added color also tends to heat up in the sunlight and melt away.

Colorful highlights are possible, though, by making colored appliques and adding them to a clear ice lantern.  Here's how:

Start with very cold water and chilled molds.  Add food coloring to the water, pour it into the molds, and freeze it as quickly as possible.  The water that is poured out of an ice lantern when it is unmolded is good to use for this purpose.  Fast freezing keeps the ice from excluding the dye as it hardens.

Red ice hearts for
Valentine's Day

One drawback of colored ice is that it heats up and "bleeds" in the sunlight.  A clear layer where the ice bonds to the ice lantern can delay the loss of color somewhat.

These hearts were made in layers, with a
colored layer first, then clear layers.  The 
colored layer doesn't bleed as much if
it isn't in direct contact with the lantern. 

A bleeding heart.
If left in the sun, the
heart will lose all of its
color, leaving the lantern
sitting in a pool of red dye.

Despite the problems with adding colors, I do like to make yellow stars and ducks, red hearts, and other colored highlights.

Yellow stars on an ice lantern

Colored features on an ice person

I've experimented with colored rims for ice lanterns, too.

The blue rim was created by freezing the
first inch or so of water in the ice lantern
mold with food coloring.  Everything was
pre-chilled, and the rim was allowed to freeze
solid before the mold was filled the rest of the
way.  The ducks were made with chilled water
and yellow food coloring in a pre-cooled mold.

I don't recommend trying to color the ice lanterns themselves, even just the rims.  It tends not to work well, and it takes a lot of monitoring and effort.  Coloring works best for small items.

Despite how much work it was to make them, I did like
the way these ducks-on-the-water ice lanterns turned out.

Color can also be added with a stencil.  See the page for that technique.

Look at the page for general information on ice appliques.

Return to the introductory page.